ah, it's almost past. the sky full of smoke from near my hometown (chico), the sun setting red.
twice i've received life-alerting missives on this particular day, which adds to both my excitement and anxiety. alas, i can't remember the second, but the first happened in oxford, england. i'd just gotten permission to stay for a year and had the money, when the coast guard wrote i'd have to come back and go to reserve meetings. this was quite a shock. i'd done a month active duty in london the year before to satisfy the requirement.
a greek island, berlin, and two years later i had to return to the land of the war in vietnam. they never called up the reserves, which definitely saved my sanity and probably my life.
what would my life had been like had i stayed in britain? perhaps quite different. maybe a permanent expat with a bouncy, buxom irish wife. no, it was not meant to be.
reading 'the flaneur' by edmund white. "Americans are particularly ill-suited to be flaneurs...they are always driven by the urge toward self-improvement." the flaneur wanders the street, joins the crowds, idly looking, for no purpose other than the experience.
all this while i thought to educate myself, grow-up, become an expert. yet i suspect i know little more than i did fifty years ago! what an astonishing thought. i do know i revel in my memories. back here at the lookout i'm constantly traveling the world.
the main awareness: you are making your world as you live in it. no wonder buddha said this the first step. you really can turn off your desires for sweets, your worries about love, you simply have to realize you're creating the craving. of course, it's easier some times than others. personally, i like to wallow in certain moods. then i can't get out of them because i'm enjoying myself!
looking back through old picture files, i think, 'how many good ones i've got already. why persist?" guess it's a further motivation for rambling, looking, it changes even a well-known place into something mysterious. here are a few more parade files from last year:
only three more hours and this fateful date will be history. the thing is, have i received an important notice without realizing it? the smoke on the horizon? the troubled dreams i had just before waking? what if i'm not getting the message, tho it's already been sent?
