Several of my dearest friends helped me walk through the Arch into Old Age in the earlier part of the Summer. Some friends created a surprise party that really was a surprise; others gathered for a special luncheon at a local Japanese restaurant. Although I know there's a chance that I might have a good twenty-five or more years ahead of me, with wonderful adventures awaiting, it is true that I have started reminiscing in a way that I really never have before. And, this is bitter-sweet.I've learned new ways of processing information. I seldom allow hideous memories to come back into my consciousness any more. I'm less driven by fear. I'm not as sure of what is proper and correct and valuable as I was when I was younger. I've accepted that there are as many ways of doing life as their are people. This is especially true of me because I am an American. Perhaps it's easier for Americans, with our high-value of Rugged Independence, to accept that there is more variety in life than ever could be expected.
I spent most of my life looking for that elusive how-to book. I always had a strong sense that other people knew things that I didn't know and that it was vital to my well-being and happiness to find that information, learn how to use it, and incorporate it into my daily life. Well. I guess to the extent that I have done that, I have done that. Life for me is no longer the fiery experience that burns my heart. Life has, for me, become a delicious, daily bread...and, mostly, I am completely satisfied.
I'm including this photograph of this roadway which goes under an arch and into what was once a town as a visual to commemorate and express to the reader how I feel at this very moment. I feel a total sense of completion of my past and a total, yet unformed, happy expectation for my future. I keep in mind that it would not be surprising if I were to drop to the ground, suddenly dead, at any moment now. That could make sense. I don't particularly expect that ... yet it is more possible now than it ever has been in the past.
I do believe that as a person reaches my age, a certain path has been created out of all of the choices we have made in the past as well as how we have processed information and handled both the expected and the unexpected. On a certain level, life is a constant maintenance of keeping total chaos at bey and generating as much order around ourselves as possible. Generally, people are more comfortable when we can pretty much predict what is going to happen next. In fact, it's orderly to have routines. We accomplish more. We are relatively predictable to ourselves and those around us. We move comfortably through the order which we have created in our lives. The people around us are comfortable. Plans are made and actuated. We move ahead from one accomplishment to another. Then, all of a sudden, Everything Changes.
This happens to everyone. Sometimes more often than we would like. Chaos roars swirling back in and around us, inundating our entire lives and purposes, our expectations and commitments, dragging us in another, unexpected, undesirable direction with all the forces of Evil and Bad Intent. There are moments in life when the most we can do is to keep breathing. To concentrate on slowly breathing in and slowly breathing out. I breath deeply and I breath completely.
I was dragged out into an Ocean of Terror exactly sixteen years ago on this very day. Nothing at all has ever been the same in my Life. Nor can it ever possibly go back to what it was. All of the worst possible things have taken place in my life during this period. I was under-served by the medical community and dis-served by the legal community. Never in a million years would I have expected the individual people in my life at that time to have acted in the ways that they did during this period.
So. Today I let go of all of that. Actually, we all know it's a process, not a moment. It's time, finally, to move on.
Moving ahead feels good to me now. Oh, yes. There are incipient left-overs of the horror yet they are pretty much predictable at this point, fairly well-contained and well-tolerated. One develops an incredibly sophisticated sense of humor. I feel like making a bumper-sticker that says, "Stupidity happens."
So I'm looking at the path which leads under the Arch and foreword into....who can really know. I'm getting a sense of possibly what I might like to do and all depends upon how my health resolves in the next little while. I've never recovered from whatever happened up above the Arctic Circle two winters ago when I was experiencing first hand...Solar Midnight on top of a very frozen mountain at 2AM and so forth. But, I did see a high-speed particle come blasting into the atmosphere, whoosh along a line of electro-magnification...and then gently drift upwards into a veil of pale, emerald-green (excited oxygen particles), drifting upwards into an Aurora Boralis...and I could see stars through it.
More to come. Tah. Pompadour.
