VACATION

  I have been on vacation, for lack of a better word. If you don’t have a job and you’re not looking either, what exactly is a vacation? I suppose it’s when one alters their normal routine in favor os something more enjoyable, more satisfying but likely unsustainable. In the end, falling back on a commonplace routine would seem the unavoidable result. Vacation took me back to some old, fondly remembered places for a couple of weeks and I kept company with long treasured friends. For nearly two weeks the road kept winding through hairpin turns while my truck strained up 7% mountain grades, over 12,000 ft passes and groaned in a lower gear on the way down to the next green valley. Surrounded by 14,000 ft. peaks we made our way past cattle grazing in high, alpine parks and meadows. I anticipated the optical illusion where the truck kept kicking down to a lower gear on what appeared to be a gentle, downgrade and the stream next to the road seemed to flow up hill. It was as if the mountains were mocking us. I love the mountains but that should be obvious here. I love the sea shore as well, where the irresistible force meets an immovable object. Something has to give but that tug of war has been waging for eons; no winners or losers, just give and take, rise and fall. I can stand on a high peak and see in a straight line for a hundred miles to a distant mountain top. Standing barefoot in wet sand I can see only a few miles before the horizon gives way to the curve of the earth but it doesn’t matter. Waves lapping at my feet share a bond with ripples lapping at a beach on another continent. I like to think I share maybe a little bit of that connection.
In the beginning, when the first, modern people searched for food and shelter in mountain valleys and along seashores, all they had to work with were bare hands, the naked eye and primitive tools. Still they wanted to know how and why things worked. Maybe (perhaps) the most important attribute of humankind is that without a factual, qualified backstory we will use imagination and a threadbare experience to create one: the origin of myth. Nowadays there is another option, a legacy of critical thinking, research and creative problem solving but those old, primitive feelings are still deeply rooted in there, inside our neural vault. I understand the ocean’s (epipelagic - sunlit zone) and how it compares to the (bathypeligac - deep, dark water). I understand how tectonic plates subduct and override each other, uplifting mountains where there had been flat lands. Still, as much as I know, the sheer magnitude and overreaching influence of mountains and seas are too much to compete with. There is so much we don’t know or understand, I think we come undone in that vacuum. We like to believe we are the captains of our own destiny but that is our modern myth. We find ourselves in over our heads, simple pieces in a vast, open ended, mind boggling puzzle. On my bravest, most confident day, on the mountain or at the shore; I am reduced to feelings of awe and wonder. Mountain ranges and sea shores do that to me just like they must have with my ancient ancestors. Just when we start feeling important, even proud; Mother Nature serves us a strong dose of humbling irrelevance. That’s when we either fall back into the comfortable myth or swallow our medicine.
Early Greek philosophers surmised that tangible matters fall into the temporal realm while matters that can only be accessed with the mind are spiritual in nature. Later, theologians monopolized the language and presumed divine authority. In that climate anything that alludes to the spirit must conform to their religious persuasion. I prefer the old Greek model. When I experience something both incomprehensible and profoundly relevant I have no trouble playing the ‘Spiritual’ card. It is fixed in my experience and it speaks to something important, greater than my ability of process it but never the less, it is real as real can be. My life has been marked again and again by spiritual experiences that I cannot explain but neither can I blow them off like a sneeze. We (people) overestimate our ability to control and override our feelings. Truth is, they rise to the challenge long before we seek a rational path and that tendency is hardwired.
I will keep going to the mountains and to the shore for as long as I can move my feet. My feelings, and I can’t ignore my feelings, they reduce me to the role of a fly on the wall; I get to watch it all unfold. I don’t need the thrill of climbing the mountain. If I get the view from the top it doesn’t matter how I get there: and if my feet get salty-wet on any shore, they have been by default all over the world. 
Midnight, I was warm and dry on my folding cot, in the shelter of my truck-camper somewhere in western Kansas; pouring rain beat out a healthy rhythm on my aluminum roof. Raindrops the size of peanuts had been on vacation from their mundane commonplace, vaporized, gone for a cloud ride and then jettisoned. We were on our way home, each in our own way. On the road next day I thought about those raindrops booming on my roof. Where had the storm dropped them; maybe breathing new life into a thirsty sunflower. There I go; making myth again. Sometimes I can’t help myself. 

ARTIFICIAL SWEETENER

  This will not be entertaining or informative but I’ve had a few weeks where the illusion has worn thin and the need to recenter is too much to dismiss. It’s been over twenty years since the movie, A Few Good Men and the hook line from that movie is what we remember. The scene is set in a courtroom during a military court martial where Tom Cruise is an aggressive young prosecutor and Jack Nicholson is the uncooperative witness. They are in the throws of a heated exchange and Cruise tries to regain control with a passionate plea; “We just want the truth!” Nicholson’s response comes like a cannon shot, full of rage and contempt: “You can’t handle the truth!” My illusion has to do with how slippery the truth can be and whether or not you can deal with it once you have it in your grasp. 
Buddhism leans heavily on the Four Noble Truths. Simply stated they tell us: This life is rooted in suffering, that suffering has a cause but the suffering will end, and that has a cause as well. I am not Buddhist but I think the overarching ideas there are profound. Buddha informs us that separation & avoidance help us along the path of enlightened. Rather than engage, we should strive to isolate from worldly distraction; not with a pious, submissive religion but through our own virtual self (meditation). 
I like the message but I cannot resist, do not want to abstain from the stuff of suffering. I want to warm in the shine and drench in the rain, so I suffer like everyone else. The fact that we are self aware, combining imagination and language to write our own future, it does not save us from whatever destiny has in store. But living in that (deliverance) myth allows enough wiggle room to offset the suffering, at least a little bit, at least for a while. Can we brainwash ourselves into a comfort zone, not all that different than hitting on cocaine or marijuana; maybe so. But you have to keep taking the pill. 
Stoicism is a school of philosophy that I am drawn to. The principle is that one should use reason to overcome self destructive emotions; it defaults to rules and patterns that are consistent with nature. That is truly a tall order as we (humans) have evolved to fall back on emotional conditioning long before we ever consider reason. That observation deserves repeating (long before we ever consider reason). In my attempt to recenter if you will, one's ability to push back against instinctive emotions is central to my purpose. If you have no concept of a parachute or its life saving potential then the thought of jumping out of a plunging, out of control airplane will never move you to action. I tend to be stoic, even skeptical and it (almost) always leaves me in the lurch between my own mortality and human mythology. 

I remember enough from my own experience and have filled in the blanks to see how people fumble the (truth) like football players drop the ball. Germany in 1936, a groundswell of self obsessed patriots put their faith in a narcissist demagogue to make Germany great again. He surrounded himself with subordinates whose first loyalty was to the despot himself rather than their responsibility to their country. We know how that turned out. Germany will never completely shed the embarrassment and shame of that folly. Now, some 80 years later there is groundswell support in America for another narcissist demagogue who is promising to make America great again. He parrots the same racist, nationalistic argument that propelled Adolph H. and his 3rd Reich. I get it! I’m old and irrelevant but I get it and it is terribly disappointing. If one cannot define narcissist, demagogue and despot then they should go dig in the nearest dictionary, right now. The collective history of demagogues reflects and repeats the same scenario, all ending with really, really bad news. 
I like to think I no longer need a buffer (an emotional preset) to ease the suffering. If my logic is nothing more than an unidentified emotion then the joke is one me. But iI'm not afraid of the unknown or life's undesirable, unavoidable destination. It simply is what it is. Meditation and withdrawal are not a cure. I am convinced that a short but exciting ride is better than a long nap. Maybe I’ve brainwashed myself into accepting my insignificant little part in disbursing the human genome. My ego and my culture would favor a comfortable afterlife and a plaque on a pillar somewhere but the illusion and the myth have no legs of their own. There in lies the truth that is so difficult to reconcile. Regardless of how the story goes after I’ve gone; I was here. I identify with Jack Nicholson. If you can’t handle the truth then someone who wrestles with the math and trusts the numbers should be trying to get your attention. I suspect I will wake up tomorrow and take comfort in the new day. It will be good enough but not all that wonderful. After all, a true stoic wouldn’t know how to respond to artificial sweetener. 

CUMPLEAÑOS

  Feliz cumpleaños para me. En la fecha de hoy, mi madre me lanzó en un viaje que me traería aquí, hoy. Gracias mamá y gracias a todos. Hoy se cumplen ochenta y cuatro años de historia de fondo para mí. Todavia tengo la mayoría de mis dientes y todos los huesos rotos han sanado. Soy un milagro que camina y habla.
Mi vida ha sido larga con muchas recompensas y solo unos pocos fracasos. Aún así, esta vida se trata de la lucha y uno debe recordar eso. Comparto la misma fecha de nacimiento pero año diferente con Barrack Obama, un buen hombre pero presidente mediocre y con Percy Shelley, un escritor maravilloso cuya reputación e ideas mejoran. Feliz cumpleaños a mí también a Obama, que sigue vivo, sigue convirtiendo el buen vino en orina. Y no se olvide de Shelley, cuyo legado aun vive.