On a steamy Sunday morning, thinking of the ones I’ve loved, the ones I’ve lost to the inevitability of death, I envision a future outside this happy moment, when action is called for, and smile.
Ready for a morning hike with new friends!
Tag Archives: humour
My Happy Place
When I’m in my happy place, concentration disappears and I just have fun, nothing accomplished, nothing lost, nothing gained, loving everyone equally, going with the flow, living as if I’m already dead…it’s almost a dangerous place, forgetting who I am, what my goals are and whom I love most.
Carpark contentment
In this moment of quiet contentment whilst walking the upper carpark at work I realise I am in the most calm condition of my life.
I have achieved the truest state of the monkhood I sought long ago.
At almost 3:30 a.m., when the freeway traffic is at a minimum, sounding like ocean waves just over a sand dune, the cicadas and crickets dominate.
My thought set requires no external validation, the same every year at this time.
I know a few friends whom I will recognise on social media for their positive influence on me.
Other than that, my conscious self remains at rest.
Ahhh..
Summertime!
Japanese garden bridge in the rain
A person on social media asked which the reader thought worse, emotional pain or physical pain?
Of course, they’re one in the same.
Emotions are not aether, miasma, or entities separate from the body.
Therefore, the question reworded: what type of physical pain do you least like to endure?
Sleep-derived tiredness is my least liked pain.
I don’t know what emotions are but I do know that personal relationship disconnectedness reduces my ability to fall asleeep quickly, same with misaligned body parts.
Sleepiness prevents fully living in the ever-changing moment, causes poor decision-making, affecting moments not yet lived.
What, then, my friend, is Love?
Love, like everything else, is physical, measurable, describable, with experimental results providing a method to create corrective actions.
Please ensure your scanned documents are streak-free and legible
In the backyard of our forested suburban lot, large rocks, boulders and outcroppings form shelves or layers of frozen time.
On one of those rocks, I slowly build an enclave, a getaway-from-it-all, a meditation garden, complete with writer’s cottage, treehouse and platform/deck for outdoor entertainment such as watching nature and dancing.
I have a public persona but I also value my privacy.
I consider myself a monk who practices the art of living in the midst of the joys and sorrows of modern society, despite his wishes to live alone on a mountaintop, knowing that his extroverted self provides more entertainment, insight and guidance to his species than his seclusion.
I debate extending permanent water pipes out to the cottage since the cottage, with a modular design, includes a conservatory in which plants will grow.
I definitely will extend permanent electrical power to the cottage, an extension cord currently serving temporary duty, powering rope lights in the treehouse.
This weekend I plan to complete clearing the forest floor and installing foundation footings and/or concrete piers for the first three modular units of the enclave — the conservatory (a greenhouse kit from Harbor Freight), writer’s cottage and workshop, the latter two using shed kits called “Stratford” from Heartlandind.com, linked in an L shape.
The conservatory will have a drain hole in it to let water drain off of the waterproofed floor.
All three units will need reinforcement like screws instead of nails, more studs and more floor joists, the conservatory raised a foot higher via 2×12 foundation lumber pieces.
The deck will tie the enclave to the treehouse via a stairway to the treehouse that connects to the deck.
Current plans for now, as budget and new ideas allow!
Unlike other sauces that mask the taste of food
Lee talked with Bai for the first but not the last time in a long time.
Knowing that talking with her opened old emotional wounds not only for himself but also for his wife, Karen, his friends Guin, Bai, Cajessi and Pierre.
Lee listened to Bai and sighed.
Two years had passed since the breakup, since Lee had lost a tightknit group of friends who introduced him to the happiness of social dancing…
Lee looked at Bai and tried to keep smiling.
The pain, mostly memory, was real again.
Bai relived the hurt he’d heard in Guin’s voice and eyes hours earlier.
Two years had passed and the pain felt just as horrible as before, everyone pretending to be analytical adults when they were crying inside.
Lee’s intention to seek healing amongst the members of the former group did not happen instantly.
Since the scars, still tender, subject to outside poison and toxins, burned at the surface, two years served only to start a life of healing.
Two years did not give them enough time to build even a modest integrated platform of a bigger organisation with new as well as old members of the core group.
Lee sighed.
He loved without judgment.
He wanted to magically heal his friends, find some way for them to forgive and forget, as he had trained himself to dissociate temporary emotional responses from influence on future actions.
But he couldn’t.
He, like them, was simply human.
And that was enough, sufficient to go forward with big goals for a bigger group.
NOTE: Inert ingredients do not include the towelette
Lee leaned back against the Lexus RX300, facing Guin.
They had moved out of direct sunlight into the shade of a metal industrial building, drifting toward their motorcars.
They chatted with each other comfortably, eager to share their thoughts, wanting success to be theirs.
Family, love, friendship tied them together.
They spent time together.
Together.
They were together.
They gave each other love.
They were friends.
They had become family.
Love of dancing, happiness about their accomplishments, including dreams fulfilled, gave them more than hope.
As they chatted, as they set plans for more time spent together, they also set aside personal time for themselves, neither jealous nor upset that they were spending too little or too much time together.
They reached the point in their lives where they were no longer apart.
They were one in ways that transcended conventional spacetime, that transcended language.
As they chatted, they solidified their futures, melded their lives, meshed their networks.
They didn’t know everything about each other because they didn’t have to, the lack of knowledge replaced with trust, historical gaps filled with future plans.
They wanted to keep chatting, keep the small talk flowing, stay in each other’s presence, give up future plans with others to stay together in the now, in that moment that lasts forever.
Last time, Guin broke the spell they had on each other.
This time, Lee did.
Lee looked into Guin’s eyes, not wanting to leave.
He didn’t want to break the spell.
They parted, if only for a brief moment.
Lee had given up his daytime sleep to be with Guin, to complete plans with her, to set more plans in motion, plans that included revisiting the past.
To be continued…
Mourning glory
Foggy soggy doggy morning on the mountain whilst delivering packed red blood cells, transferring them from one hospital to another earlier today.
Back in the Sunny Street Cafe with the gray/white-haired crowd, hearing the laughter of children, the vibratory puffs of air we call voices adding to a random spoken poem or prose song by all ages.
It’s just me here, the random set of states of energy, a result of billions of years of energy states reacting to one another.
It’s just me here, wondering what to do next.
It’s just me here, no superpowers, no vast wealth at my disposal, just a friendly smile to create out of this set of states of energy to warmly greet other such sets which can interpret the smile in such a way that it prevents significant damage to my set.
It’s just me here, as it’s always been, figuring out what to do before I die of natural causes or other mishaps out of my control.
I fall back in my thoughts to my late high school years when I overheard two girls talk about me.
One: “So, are you going to try to get alone with Lee on the band trip?”
Two: “Not this time.”
One: “Why not? He’s cute. You know such-and-such wants to be alone with him, too.”
Two: “Well, she can go ahead. He wouldn’t know what to do if you were alone with him naked and he had an instruction manual.”
From then on, it was a challenge within a small group of girls to try to get me to make out with them.
Little did they know that when I was 16 I’d already gone all the way with a girl and separately with a guy, finding the experience thrilling in the discovery stage but ultimately disappointing.
From then on I thrilled only in the chase, walking away when I got bored chasing or the person I chased wanted me to catch her.
Thus it is that I enjoy dancing, a more elegant and fun form of the chase.
I still don’t know what to do when I’m alone with a woman other than converse politely.
If I don’t dance, I write.
It’s just me here, after all, unable to support myself on my own, a taxi dancer on permanent retainer by my handler, a/k/a my lifelong friend socially labeled my wife, who reluctantly loans me out without complaining about my prolonged absence.
It’s just me here, wallowing in the mud of mediocrity, waiting to die, sticking his head up to smell the fresh breeze of those frolicking in nearby open pastures, dreaming I could be a horse instead of a hog.
Time to work on my dream writer’s cottage, where I can hide when I’m not working.
Summertime
Summertime, what is summertime, when you’ve lived a good long life, felt thousands of generations of your species pass through you, when you feel old beyond your years, only energised when your marionette/puppet self is picked up and played with by others?
What is summertime when you work the midnight shift, sleeping all day, the weather a matte background on the stage of life?
What is summertime when you’re standing in awe outside a batcave whilst thousands of flying mammals exit the cave and a mother next to you chats on her smartphone complaining about her life to a friend, simultaneously yelling at her kids to be careful, caring nothing about the swirl of bats heading toward open waters?
Her reality is not my reality, our view of summertime completely different.
I avoid others when I’m unhappy and unable to pretend to be happy without the aid of alcoholic beverages.
I know that being the life of the party costs my mental health when I’m alone again, aware of the shakes and shivers of stage fright taking its toll on my wellbeing after entertaining others, my puppet strings slack.
treetrunkdings 