Coming back to the idea of the body as a temple

I have a nearly 20 year old car that I am losing confidence in.  It requires more and more maintanence, more thought and consideration.  I coddle it and don't push my luck when driving.  The thought of a cross country trip in the thing is a non-starter.  The body is slowly deteriorating - sometimes in the street - and I am not as proud as I once was of it.

So I'm coming back to the idea that I must spend more and more time on the maintenance of my body as well.   I must spend more and more time on maintaining it, coddling it, making sure that I am doing nothing too awful to it.  I cannot trade it in.  The shop labor for repair is astronomical.   I must spend more and more time buffing and exercising and making sure that I can last for the long haul.

It's a change from what I did in my youth, thinking I was ageless, that no harm could come to me.  That being skinny was a curse. 

Such a long time ago.

Coming back

Waking up, again.  Finding perspective is an active task -- More difficult than it sounds.

It is easy to sink down into the snow that results from the daily avalanche of news, outrage, entertainment and everything else that calls, pulls and drags our attention to it. 

It has become a science: catching our eyeballs, making us stop, respond, buy, consume and little to show for it except for a loss of attention, a loss of precious time, an opportunity cost of what could have been. 

I seek to drag myself back into the world, to keep my own counsel, to find out what has been happening with myself.

White Mountains, NH 2018

Los Olivos

Who Are You?

 

Let me begin again – Li-Young Lee, “Visions and Interpretations”

I was born in 1961, the son of a miner and a miner’s daughter, raised by my mother along with two sisters,  in a small town in Arizona.  I muddled my way through school without incident or accolade and worked in construction after high school

I turned from a skinny, pale, shy kid into an adult.  I became self-confident to a degree.  And I slowly realized that I was homosexual. 

Because of this, I decided that another career than construction would be more appropriate.  I enrolled at the University and eventually graduated with a degree in History.  I fell in with an artistic crowd.  I relished the academic and intellectual life.  I slowly grew to accept my sexuality and wondered about a world outside of construction. 

But college life is no substitute for a career and construction offered, quick money and few responsibilities.  So I went back to working in the trades.  Eventually, I settled into construction management, first for an electrical contractor and then for a general contractor where I specialized in data center construction.

I retired early and live in Phoenix and have a partner and work part-time at my own electrical contracting firm, writing, painting and learning the guitar.

Flash in the dark

Swirling around my head are the resentments and assumptions that only burn energy and do not make forward progress.  I have been grounded once again.  I don't know what, first, causes the descent into slothful, inner reflection or what was the catalyst that drew me back out of the hole.

I have woken once again to realizing that I need to get moving, make progress forward.  the light turned on over the weekend and I saw myself starkly against the future: fat, lazy, dumb, drunk.  It is not what I think my potential.  I must resit against giving up.  I remind myself that there is so much to do still.  And so little time.

Time to get away

The need to get away, somehow driven by the stress of retirement?  Seems strange but, because it is available to me, I need to take more and more advantage of it.  It doesn't need to be a big deal, a long trip with supplies and contingencies.  I can always buy what I need.  Just throw a couple boxes in the car and choose a direction.

Hopefully I can find an isolated spot

How frustrated and disappointed in my painting I am.  I am not sure why I thought it would be easier.  There is no latent talent to be uncovered here.  There is only the slow, workmanlike, development of a n eye and a sense for color.  It is color that I find the most difficult.  I will buy a color wheel and read on color theory and let my right brain feed on this.

Mine:

 A real painter: