sometimes i wonder: what was that lifetime all about?

the first psychic i visited, gloria saches, said, "Everything speeded up. We're living six lifetimes in one." that certainly seems true for me and not very comfortable. the passions have come and gone. theater possessed me at least three times: when i was a child, dressing up in a toga, and giving speeches to kids on the block. later, at 18, determined to become a famous playwright, directing plays, doing a bit of acting. this went on for the longest time.

early thirties and i pushed it to the limit, working at uc santa cruz. unfortunately, by the end of the decade, disappoints in love undermined my forward drive. i retreated into writing poetry. one more theater period emerged in the 1990's, ten years of production, minor victories, finally satisfied i'd learned to direct and how to write a play. 

again, circumstances changed. the theater changed hands. i switched to photography, taking up the art i'd abandoned at sixteen. fifteen years of digital snaps, theater, dance, community events, stacking up quite a pile. let's google my name and see what's there: 

http://www.pbase.com/wwp/ hmm, 35,000 pictures. those saved from taking approximately a million a year. 

alas, i ran to the end of that, selling off all the fancy equipment. i turned to the iphone and have been perfectly happy with it, snapping less and less, posting a few like a diary on facebook. francis bacon said his paintings, 'like the slime of a snail crawling across a canvas." there is a point when i ask myself, "so what?" i like having a record, yet does it add up to anything? 

other lives have been: music, taking singing lessons, writing a few songs. this too depended on a social environment, lookout friends driving for hours to eat corn on the cob. and this community dissolved, as each went their separate way. or travelling, forty countries collected, memories choice and sublime, lonely and bereft. all this mixed up with romances flickering out like fireflies. 

and the lifetime above in the photograph, a puppet-show with a partner, not looking particularly unhappy, yet if i include the expressions of the puppets, they do sum up a number of lifetimes. maybe it's true, a man lives by fits and starts, while a woman inhabits more of a flow. for most people i feel it's merely a matter of keeping very busy while life passes unnoticed. don't ask too many questions. as sachel paige said, "Don't look back. Someone may be catching up with you."

i like this picture. that was a joyful life for me.

a letter on retirement

hi russ, thinking about our conversation yesterday, very relevant to me! one reason i like the lookout job is i told myself i could go on for a very long time and that's the way it's worked out. when young, i told myself never to retire, which meant to keep using my brain and being creative. i wanted this job so i could read and write. without house and family i could travel. and now my travel memories my favorite, they make me feel i've lived. and then there was a twenty year period where i chased women and had lots of love affairs. despite the ups and downs, the aches and pains, the fun and jealousy (terrible emotion), i sometimes wish for those years back again. i thought i should live to accumulate memories. that has worked to a certain degree. lots of flashbacks simply a streetcorner in spain or the smile of a girl on a paris subway. really not great, momentous moments. places to wander and wonder how i ever got there. i've always been very conscious of death and time. being a minister's kid i saw all the phases of life celebrated. at times i do feel a lot of anguish, time slipping away. other times i'm able to live in the moment and to challenge myself. i read recently, "Everything you've ever wanted lies just outside your comfort zone." i feel i have to push myself to travel. a week can feel like a year and complesses time. i also keep going to classes, partly simply to feel connected with the world. i also use facebook a lot. i've connected with a lot of people from the past as well as family. again, it's a way of being part of the world even sitting up here by myself. these days i do try to avoid the news. you know why. and i am listening a lot more to music to keep my spirits up. i suppose i do use the job as an identity, since it's very exotic for a lot of people. that said i've tried to keep other identities so i'm not so dependant on one: student, traveler, writer, photographer, etc. i have always struggled with depression and try to keep the words of the painter Georgia O'Keefe in mind: "I've been frightened my whole life and never let it stop me from doing anything." this morning it occures to me, we do have to keep challenging ourselves. once a job stops and other people aren't making demands, we have to make them on ourselves. i've always thought you very robust and your intellect interesting and fun. this is a pep-talk for myself, as much as for you! WALKING is definitely part of the answer. be sure to visit me before the 28th. i'm off next sun-wed. all the best, wayne  ps. i've always enjoyed our conversations a lot. 

can sanity prevail?

i'm trying very hard not to project my own physical decay - trigger fingers, A-fib, hydro-cele - onto the world. too many old folks feel the world is going to hell because they are. any change becomes a cause for alarm: a favorite tree cut down, a laundromat going out of business, an idiot elected to office. alas, i have old style cassettes with no interpretation  left, a part of my past erased.

and these days i feel like i live in a country losing its grip on reality. true, people still buy houses and fix them up. on the large tv at the orthopedic office young couples describe how they're renovating and improving the premises. the other day on the local university campus groups of high school kids were all over the place being seduced to join up. 

train-loads of new tanks roll through town, and new cars drive out of the dealers, shiny and ominous. every time i drive the canyon ninety miles to town, deadly boulders on one side and the swirling river on the other, i watch the oncoming cars like a hawk. damn, the most dangerous thing i can do is climb into my pickup.

of course, i am becoming a fraidy-cat. as i grow older, i realize how many things can get me and how many times i've fallen asleep on the road and woken up in the other lane, an oncoming truck not that far away. or the falls i've taken on my back off the back deck or the rocks below the lookout. life seems a crap shoot, a matter of pure luck. why wasn't i born in a ditch in india? 

i do comfort myself with thoughts of being chosen, a poet, a traveler, a photographer, kept alive by Sidney, my guardian angel. and then, i forget all about him, sailing along as though my survival were my own doing, or simply good fortune. either i'm a saint doing good work in the world, or a fool too lazy to die. 

and what is sanity? i've decided this morning it's empathy, the ability to have sympathy for other people, to cry for a child or help an old lady across the street. a friend had an uncle who worked at a ultra-security prison for the worse kinds of sex offenders. he said the prisoners all had one thing in common: no empathy. they couldn't feel he pain of another human being. 

has the election of a man with no empathy put the world in danger? sometimes paranoia is reasonable, sane, justified. one push of the button and the northern hemisphere is toast. i'm just about to make a trip to australia, my third, just in case.