FIT TO LIVE

Forget what I said a couple of entries ago about my thumb being on the mend.  I was misled by the visual.  However, after a visit to the doctor yesterday, two courses of antibiotics and a Tetanus shot, I'm good.

Damn dog.

Some lessons take longer to learn and some realities are harder to fully recognize, I suppose.  I am only surprised because I am old enough to be more savvy and to have evolved well beyond this point.

 I should know better than to have labored under the constraints living with an unpredictable dog demand, entertained disingenuous people calling it friendship and believe now that by enduring exceedingly long hours punishing my body on that damned elliptical I am going to somehow preserve or restore my youth when in reality, it is going to get me in the end.  I will never again be twenty-eight or thirty, but my knees and joints will eventually wear out, if I don't exercise some restraint instead of reckless abandon.

A 'happy medium' is in order.

Yesterday I did make some strides in that department by taking myself to the doctor for my thumb, thereby recognizing I, indeed, had a problem; and by getting up early to meet my friend, Shelley, at the park for a walk.  Not only did my body appreciate the change of pace from that machine of torture upstairs, but I realized a whole different set of muscles were being engaged when walking briskly and that I was taking some slack off my knees and thighs as well as amping up those muscles in my derriere.   Who, at any age, couldn't use a tighter ass?

But the question should really be, "Why do I care?"

Being healthy is all well and good, but the rest seems only relevant and achievable when you neither care about it as much or need it at all.  Think about it.  How many hours did you spend on treadmills or ellipticals  or engaged in other toning, ab-chasing exercises when you were in your prime?  How about, NONE!

I know I didn't.

And the real irony is that at the ages and stages of life when we are naturally fit, resilient, outwardly fresh, toned and strong and can most readily and easily handle these grueling tortures in our quest for enduring physical attractiveness,  we don't need to!

 We only need to once we are at the point when the external elements of feature and form are becoming lax; where torn ligaments, sprained muscles, and damaged joints are most likely to occur without a whole lot of provocation, and when the possibility of actually achieving the restoration and rejuvenation of our former glory is.....well, impossible!

But it makes us temporarily feel better about being older when we can still run faster, jump higher and leap tall buildings in a single bound in comparison to our aging competition; not to forget the inevitable comparisons externally.  It seems only the brave and the inspired who willingly embrace gray when bottled blonde or brunette are so readily accessible;  to embrace baldness or drooping eyelids when hair transplants and brow lifts are possible or to wear those fine lines and wrinkles when botox and other procedures are available?

The sad element to our collective compulsion to hold onto our youth, aside from the obvious, freakish appearances of those who can no longer recognize the difference between a naturally youthful face from that of an inflated, pulled-back look as though your face has been frozen at the point of descent on a really, really steep roller coaster, is that by doing so, we become more imprisoned by the limitations of this world than ever before.

There is something incredibly and profoundly liberating when you reach mid-life and make the choice to fully BE and to accept who you are and at what stage you are without reserve and with excitement.  At no other point in life do we really have it all quite as generously as we do in our middle years.

When we are very young, we are busy growing up.  When we are moderately young, we are busy raising families or careers.  When we are elderly, we are busy processing and reflecting and preparing to bring things to a close.

But right now, smack dab in the middle, we are privileged to indulge both ends of the spectrum.  Generally, our kids, if we have any, are at ages of self-sufficiency to a large degree, we still have a lot of energy and stamina, our minds are sharp and our experience, long.  These are all good things, and if recognized and heeded, can lead to a wisdom and a freedom so profound we'll never want to look back.

If you put any faith at all into the idea that there is a deliberate design in and a much larger purpose for the process of aging, you have to conclude that the only logical explanation would be to attempt to inform us of the power inherent in letting go of the ways of this earth and to organically but forcefully instruct us to begin putting the energies and accumulated wisdom we've gathered from our earthly tenure into the ways of the spirit and all the transcendency that exists from the point of heart and beyond.

The shift of emphasis would go from our forms to forgiveness, our abs to absolution, our Body Mass Index to Being More Illuminated; and the muscle we would exercise the most would be our heart.  At that point I think we'd be of much more value and service to our younger counterparts and the entire planet as compassionate mentors for them rather than competitive agents against them.  We are designed to lose at the latter anyway.


Obviously, I'm not advocating sloth.  I think it is important to remain active and conscious of how we walk through the world making sure to do so with grace and compassion as well as in the best possible health.  However, whatever beauty exists within the qualities of grace and compassion has far and away a more enduring power to beguile and transform than any toned bicep or lifted jowl.

That being said, I don't plan on foregoing my ongoing exercise routine.  As I have alluded to before,  my time on that damned elliptical is as much a time to plumb the depths of my soul and my imagination as it is to push to the limits my ripened bones; and my personal issue has to do with staying focused enough on what I am doing so as not to remain in a state of heightened movement too long and to the point of injury.  I daydream to a nearly unfathomable degree.

But I've tried not to let the declivitous effects of time on my face and form undermine my confidence and overwhelm my thoughts.  Some days it is definitely harder than on others.  And there is always this lame and underlying concern that those who knew me before the ravages of time had made their mark, will be disappointed in the mature version and will not give me the chance to restore my faded image with the internal and heart-funded version I've been working so diligently these fifty-four years to cultivate and feature. That they will just say, "God!  What happened to her?  She didn't hold up very well!" and stop there.

I guess it is my hyper-awareness of what is important and impressive to most people that causes me to react to the restrictive conditioning, which puts more emphasis on the least important aspect of ourselves; how we appear.   I don't want to care, but I do.  I care about how I am perceived, and I make internal calls based on the initial appearance of others.

Happily, I've gotten to the point where I quickly shut those perceptions down and immediately open up other channels when meeting someone for the first time or assessing someone I've known.  But it took a long time to get there.

Sometimes I wish we were all just floating bubbles or formless wisps taking each other in by essence alone.  It would eliminate so many of our misguided impressions and unfounded prejudices and expedite our journey towards enlightenment and our return to embracing love alone.

And the best thing would be that I could finally get rid of that damned elliptical.

LETTING GO OF THE WHEEL

What is it about the principle of letting go that is so difficult for most of us to engage?  You would think that laying back and riding out the waves of life in compliant, complacent abandon would be just about as easy an approach as anyone could take.  It would be the existential equivalent of a salted, tanned and healthy surfer dude only with less skin damage and more natural introspection.

Today I am very unfocused and adrift without an agenda; but the urge to write is pressing leading me to understand that should I choose to yield to the latter activity, I had better have full confidence in my ability to successfully operate under the conditions of the former.

I don't always, of course, which again gets back to that whole principle of letting go.

Before I ever began this creative writing experiment in the blogosphere (still to this present moment having NO idea of either what a blog actually is, where it goes or who gives a damn), I held as one of the main tenants and esoteric substructures within my eclectic belief system, the idea that beneath our obvious dialogue with ego and id lies the much more powerful and profound connection with The Divine; and that if given half a chance it would lead us all back to our angelic roots and celestial family of origin as well as to the concise and perfect fulfillment of our ultimate purpose for being.

I have been fortunate enough to witness many times in my life verifiable evidence of this radical truth, and I am sure almost anyone else who has worked to become a vigilant observer of self can also attest to similar revelations.

However, it has been an unexpected but pleasantly obvious fact that this same principle of gently subduing the ego and yielding to The Divine has practical and profound implications even in something as ostensibly meaningless, random and patently narcissistic as writing a blog.

At it's earliest inception, this particular blog was supposed to have had one aim:  To attract readers who would eventually navigate their way to the Website that I was in the process of building with Johnny Asia, my webgod.  It was to be a minor adjunct to a major enterprise, that being my artwork.  And so in those first couple of entries I struggled to conceive and subsequently develop a theme for each.

I mean, I really sat down and thought about available subject matter and whether I knew enough to craft a sort of shallow and somewhat entertaining thesis about whatever final topic was selected.  The whole thing terrified me especially when I was forced to come eye-level with the reality that I don't really know a lot about too much that is either educationally enlightening, esoterically uplifting or philosophically provocative.

But even in the face of that apprehension I knew one thing without question:  I wanted to keep on writing.  I HAD to keep on writing.

That is when I realized that the only way this passion would find expression would be if I just LET GO.
I'm not talking about the kind of letting go I have referred to before where you are letting go of a response to something taxing or otherwise unpleasant.  I'm talking about the whole enchilada version of letting go.  The version that plants you firmly in the hands of God, the universe, the Holy Spirit,  angelic choirs, spirit guides, creative forces or all of the above without reservation, pretension or any overriding agenda or intent.


Wanna talk about scary?

Yet I was willing to give it a shot because, as I stated, I am simply not smart enough to contain my thoughts to only those few brilliant themes, principles and philosophies I've read about in books, and my blogging enterprise would hasten to a short and pathetic end long before I'd succeeded in my initial goal for recognition and to lead an eventual clientele to my website.

If nothing else, operating under the liberal reigns of unlimited restraint has bought me some more time.

Some might suggest that is ALL it has bought me.

But at the very least I've been able to watch the magic of serendipity and improvisation collide in nearly every post as it spontaneously erupts from my soul.  From the first sentence to closing I have little idea where I am going or why, yet by the time I finish, there before me is a coherent, cohesive and (usually) beautifully laid-out essay that almost looks as though it sprang from a detailed outline crafted the night before.  Given my limited abilities, I find this nothing short of a literary miracle and a profound grace.
My gratitude is immense.

What is more, in all but a few entries I have been able to illustrate each post with just the right drawing or painting or, as in the case of my son's story, the perfect photograph to enliven the text with visuals and color.   Many of these drawings were done years earlier and without the remotest idea that they would one day be utilized in this way, and I don't know until the post is complete what visual example I even have available to use.  But I always find one.

Of course, this can't continue indefinitely because I don't have an unlimited supply of artwork to accommodate what I hope will be a long compositional affair.  But for now it has been an encouraging and unexpected convergence of word and image so perfectly appropriate that it could have come only from a source much greater than the one between my ears.

I may never know why I am so drawn to language and communication and the development of each as they can be shared in this vast, vague and abstract venue of cyberspace, but that is alright.  If I'm going to let go, I am going to LET GO.  The whole object of faith is to be committed to the process without any assurances as to the purpose or the plan.  We all know we have one.  Usually multiples of them.

But there is something kind of exciting about navigating the linguistic hairpin turns and curves at break-neck speeds, half blinded by the glare from the rising sun of consciousness above the dashboard of mundane consideration.  You know that at some point if you are true enough to the moment and allow the acceleration of thought to drive you faster into and around the next bend, you just might find yourself  involved in a spectacular crash with no survivors.

In the past such collisions have been given names:  Don Quioxte, Catcher In The Rye, Grapes Of Wrath, A Farewell To Arms, Moby Dick, One Hundred Years Of Solitude and War And Peace, to name a scant portion.

Obviously, I don't presume to have anywhere near the sacred and creative genius of those mentioned and I can only aspire to such a colossal death in my dreams.   Yet no matter how illogical my compulsion and in spite of the brutal odds against it, I simply cannot ignore my crazed drive to keep on the road, lay off the brakes and just LET GO.


And if I run out of gas, I'll walk.

NAKED IRONY

It is early in the morning but I am awake and exercising my lean digits across my well-worn keyboard.  I've already punished the rest of my body on that damned elliptical and decided it only fair to exercise them as well.

 It is necessary to make mention of the lean composition of my fingers because they are the only part of my entire body that totally conform to that descriptor, and I need to remind myself of that visually redemptive fact sometimes.  Particularly now that the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated has somehow found its way back as a fixture among the other, less threatening periodicals in the master bathroom.

Until such time as it becomes passe and I notice that Consumer Reports or Men's Health have worked their way once again to the fore of the magazine bin on the floor, I am doomed to absorb the stark contrast between the reflection of myself in the mirror and whatever nubile goddess (who, as every year, has been ordered to hide her breasts and hold her swim top) graces the cover and is reflected behind me like some petty, vindictive, under-clad angel of Christmas' Past.

Not that I was ever a contender for the job even in my youth, but at least age gave me a fighting chance and the laws of gravity were squarely in my corner mopping my brow and giving me that rousing shove to continually get back in the ring.  It is obvious that at some point the bell rang indicating the match had ended, but I was probably too busy packing lunches for my kids or attending little league games or scrubbing toilets to notice.

However, based on the battered visual I am left with, it would appear it was a knockout and not one in my favor.   Now I'm left with a body that has taken one too many c-sections to the groin, sleepless nights that have registered as dark half-moons under my eyes and days, months and years of female stoicism  carved like a fine-lined, topographic map of domestic and personal upheavals and restorations on my baleful scowl.

And as I awkwardly maneuver my naked body to the shower while my glossy-papered nemesis gloats in all her tabloid glory from her corner of the lavatory ring, I am thinking that even Rocky Balboa must look better today than I do.

I know that when a door closes, a window supposedly opens, and in theory that is true.  I've discovered such windows flying open right and left as I've watched the corresponding slamming of both the doors of options as well as those of action; which leaves me wondering whether God has perhaps some obsession with irony.

Why would it be that just as our eyes have adjusted to the consequential glare of the benefits in living by the Golden Rule and the brilliant logic behind the principles of letting things be and rising above pettiness and the advantage of focusing your energies on giving more than we receive, would He also arrange the commensurate deterioration of our bodies?

Just when we reach the age and stage where we can finally say we've got so much to offer, we are also at the age and stage where nobody wants it.

The social and cultural preoccupation is decidedly fixed upon the character and form of the Sports Illustrated swim suit models and whether or not they can actually put those swimsuit tops on themselves or is the complexity such that they require assistance.  What subtle treasures of coherent thought even these beauties may harbor between their perfect ears is of little or no consequence and less so from anyone grazing the edges of gravity's tenacious grasp.

I'm not entirely sure why this is the imaginary road my brain ambled down today.  I don't really care about the swimsuit models and am fairly well tenured in the art of acceptance; at least enough not to let myself become seriously disturbed by anything radically defined by the laws of physics and biology.

I suppose that, in part, it is because I don't want to explore anymore dark corners for a while and felt that a little bit of levity was necessary.  After the last few entries this blog was beginning to resemble a really bad country western song where its always raining, you're misunderstood and dang lonely, the kid's in jail, the dog dies and your man's done run off with the check-out gal from The Piggly Wiggly. (I made that last one up.  We don't have a Piggly Wiggly here.)

Not only do I want to avoid sounding as though I can only see through a glass darkly, but I would rather be roped to a honey tree in a forest of Black Bears than believe my words bring to mind the refrain of some song belted out at The Grand Ole Opry.  My sincerest apologies to any and all country music aficionados out there.  For whatever reason, it just ain't my thing.

Actually, I'm still looking for my thing, and given the image reflected in my mirror this morning, I'd better get my ass in gear.  Time is definitely flagging me with a perceivable deadline, which is a little annoying considering the fact that I feel I've only just gotten started.

I wonder how biblical greats like Noah and Methuselah so greatly exceeded what has now become our rather short expiration date?  One thing is certain:  they managed to live hundreds of years a piece without the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition.

In light of our present state of cultural and spiritual deprivation globally, we might want to consider the benefits from doing without it as well.   Loin cloths might even become a fashion mainstay once more....

God forbid!

ARLO'S PARTING GIFT

Just a shade over an hour ago I had the mournful duty of taking my thirteen-year old dog, Arlo, to the vet for the last time.  I knew on Tuesday night that he was in trouble.  When an old dog whimpers at every odd move,  it is a clear indication that those carefree days of unlimited mobility and rowdy displays of affection are gone.

He had been hosting this declivitous passage for a few months having lost his hearing in early fall with his eyesight in close competition, and more recently, drinking copious amounts of water (which is usually a sign of kidney failure in old dogs); but until the other night, he was not in any perceivable pain, had a healthy appetite and a frequently wagging tail.

So I let him be and merely observed.

However, I knew this day was not long off and began preparing myself for its arrival in small ways; one being to continually absorb the reality that already he was no longer the dog I had weaned on a bottle from two weeks old and the one who, ever since, has rarely left my side.

He could no longer hear me so that the comforting cooing from me to him and eager responsiveness from him to me was no longer possible.  Often he would stare off into nothingness looking tense and concerned, which made me think how lonely and afraid he must be without the use of all his natural instincts and senses.  But he how slept a lot.

So I let him be and merely observed.

It is a little surprising to me that I am right now able to sit here calmly without tears and put this into words, and I know my family was worried about how I was going to handle this day when it came.  This dog had been my dog and mine alone for all these years and was the last of our dogs to have made the journey with us from Connecticut through our years in Arizona and finally to our present home in Missouri.  He was the last readily visible and living link to those other parts of my life and a part of every event from the mundane to the miraculous for well over a decade.  He was my loyal buddy and my constant companion and pal.  He was MY dog.

He was also the most difficult, high-strung, neurotic, hyper-attached and temperamental dogs I have ever owned in my entire life; destroying countless pieces of furniture and assorted objects when he was young; utterly and completely losing all composure during thunderstorms and otherwise windy, unpleasant weather days; and utilizing the unfortunate defense strategy of nipping or biting when feeling threatened or fearful.  Unfortunately, the latter was a trait he never outgrew (his recent deafness ended the thunderstorm hysteria) and which was lately made more of a conspicuous problem commensurate to his increasing level of discomfort.  It could only get worse.

But I let him be and merely observed.

The joke had always been that Arlo had bitten everyone in the family except for me.  The joke can now be abandoned.

This morning after he had been initially sedated, with his warm, limp body draped across my lap as we both sat on the floor of the examination room, the vet and her assistant came in to shave his back leg and apply the final dose that would ultimately lift him out of all his pain.

In those wrenching and protracted minutes before their return to the room,  I remained motionless; stroking the side of his old mutt face, studded with the white hairs of a useful passage.  Right then within my body I held twelve years of gratitude, elation, forgiveness and sorrow bound up like padded wounds in the soft void of my next breath; so that my breathing, now thin and shallow, was in perfect measure a  mirror of his own.  Yet in every other way I was doing as I had always done at every point of rest or moment of quiet for longer than time could understand; silently loving my good dog.

And as the assistant gently reached for the old boy's hind leg to prepare it this final step, without warning and in a state of typical, neurotic, Arlo panic with the defensive drive of a cornered beast, he frantically lifted his head and clamped down full and hard on the thumb of my hand that had yet to cease its furtive caresses.

He bequeathed me a stunning blood-blister bruise on the nail side, a neat little puncture wound on the other and a royal throbbing pain that now extends from my thumb wrapping around my wrist, down my arm and continues to this very moment.

Of course, he had no idea that it was me he was attempting to censure or even precisely what he was doing, but in some small way the visceral and excruciating nature of his parting gift has made it a little bit easier for me to sit here now and remember the tension and challenges loving this dog presented; which, in turn, has given me a slight respite from the bellowed suffering of pure, unadulterated grief.  As much as I adored him and as devoted as he was to me and to my every movement; it has also been thirteen years of apprehension wondering, "Who will Arlo attempt to bite next?"; particularly when someone came to the front door.

I suppose my worn little mongrel did me a favor by yielding to his neurosis one last time and leaving me with an aching, searing reminder that sometimes death brings with it a mixed blessing:  I have released him from a lifetime of anxiety and a dotage of pain and infirmities; he has released me from perpetual worry and the underlying stress attendant to the ownership of such an unpredictable animal.  The pain of injury to my wounded thumb has blessedly mitigated some of the pain of loss in my temporarily unconsolable heart.

All these thoughts gelled like a healing emotional balm in my mind as I continued to cradle Arlo's head in my lap and wait for the second sedative injection to take effect.  (It was decided after the biting that this was the next best course of action.  Anything was better than a muzzle.)

And by the time the final injection was given, what had first been for me a nearly uncontrollable outpouring of raw grief and bottomless despair had now become a bloom of great calm and gratitude for his long years of devotion, and a willingness to accept the loss of him while at the same time embrace the unrestrained freedom each of us would now own.  It was his parting gift to me at the perfect time.

So I let him be and merely observed.