Life’s Engineering… NM

Thursday, December 13th, 2018

“In youth we learn; in age we understand.” ~ Marie von Ebner Eschenbach ~

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A beautiful Sunset last evening in White Sands Park, Alamogordo, NM

I know, I know, I think too much. Especially on a day as today when windy and cold outside only makes me want to stay indoor popping my head out at times and retrieving as fast as possible. Too lazy for more layers. Maybe later. The thoughts actually took place last night for some reason or another, mainly after receiving an email from a good Friend elaborating his lack of spare time to even go and watch his Grand Children at their yearly Christmas show. How wrong is that? Confirmation calls from my Dentist for Monday to remove a couple more teeth and for Tuesday, my first right side ablation, all did not help surfacing these thoughts. It was as suddenly a complete landscape of Life materialized in my mind from Birth to the end and how lopsided it all seriously is. How wrongly all has been in some distant past engineered while I am not going to get into who engineered it because truthfully I don’t know. Someone can enlighten me if you do know. They have, he or she has much to be blamed. Seriously!

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To start with how it all came about as while getting older [I try hard to not use the word “old”…] we miss so much while so many aspects have been taken away and will never be replaced. I am by the way totally aware of younger people having it worse with the many tragedies happening and yet I come back to the fact of how badly our ending of this Life’s span and chapters have been so disengaging. I can’t have another Child, Parents are gone as also Grand Parents, Uncles and Aunts, Nephews, Nieces, you name it including many very close Friends departed obviously before me. I can’t even have Spirit back. Where does all this leaves us as we try to live the present because that is the proper way to live? Erase the memories? Live as no past ever existed? So wrong also.

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Am I suppose to walk down the street singing some happy song with a big smile on my face? Some of us do know that it is our responsibility to stay afloat, grab the bull by its horns and on and on. Yet, there is too often a knot in my stomach thinking about it all as if there was a haze between me and the horizon, this semi transparent curtain which is not allowing me to even perceive that line between Earth and Sky. The past sure was as they say “grand” and is this today the gift we receive from all those years past? I have said it before not long ago, I am happy, fortunate to have a home, a car, food, heat and medical care only a couple miles from here. Medical Insurance! Social Security! A few great Friends. No doubt regarding all those aspects yet so much is missing and will always be missing. This is not how I would have personally engineered Life.

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I am not depressed about it, I don’t have thoughts of ending these days on my own, far from it only because of this phrase I repeat to myself too often so simply elaborating the present “It is what it is”. And truly that is it. No more and no less. Nothing is going to change those facts. In his days of past fame, Napoleon wanted to remove the word “impossible” from the French language. It is a fact. Something I totally understood in my youth as through my schooling, college and career I was propelled by that aspect. Today I disagree. The word “impossible” is real and alive. Unfortunately. All of the above loss is indeed impossible to recuperate no matter how much today I would try and try again. Spirituality, meditation, thinking of paths not yet laid out ahead, none will help and only frustration surfaces.

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I am not even talking about medical conditions as the body falls apart here and there needing surgeries and medication. When teeth get tired of biting the enormous amount of food we have ingested over the years and need to be somehow expensively replaced, or not… This carrier, our engine no more running on all cylinders as when finally retired we need it the most! How ironic is this? Forget the cosmetic end of it which many pay much importance like a toupee, a fake tan and new boobs and whatever else can be rearranged and rebuild. Personally, who cares? Kind of like rebuilding and restoring this old car but the big difference is and always will be is the fact that we are not mechanical. We might get a new shine, new parts as myself have here and there, a few bypasses and stents for the cylinders to fire up properly but the mind is untouchable. So far it is… Maybe some day Microsoft or Apple will have that ability to upgrade our internal software but I very much doubt it even though I know they are trying.

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I do rejoice today having had a profession when throughout those years I never felt I was working, only playing in kitchens with other’s money cooking always being my passion especially having wealthy clients. Oh! the fun spending thousands of dollars for dinners for twelve or sometimes fourteen which is all I did. I rejoice of the memories with Spirit while living as vagabonds for fourteen years. Often filled with roughness, difficulties, the lack of plan B when breaking down, the many what I call “peanut butter and jelly days”. Each single one of those moments were indeed past gifts I was, we were, so lucky to receive as might add also with your often generous help. I don’t forget that aspect and will always “Thank You” for it. Always as “you” made it possible in so many more ways than one.

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It is all clear now what I am trying to say. Isn’t it? All of the above brings my thoughts to my own hero “Mike Saunders”. And why? Since 2014, Mike in his only late 20’s left for the road as Spirit and I did with the big difference that he was 50 years ahead of me. He knew and does know everything I have written above. Watch his four minutes and 20 seconds video and you will understand it all. Trust me that it will be a Life’s lesson well acquired. I really don’t have to add another word as he says it all. Please watch it… He often leaves his Ruckus 50cc [yes… 50ccc!] behind and it is then time as last year going down the rivers with a canoe and this year with a kayak and right now going up the eastern coast with it towards Washington. His next adventure? Walking from Delaware to Los Angeles hoping he will stop here again as he has done in the not so distant past as also he did a few times at The Oasis in Texas.

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Mike's Kayak Journey

Life goes on. Don’t think bad of me because of my observations and if you do, well, my Journal is my companion, seems as it always will be and remember “It is what it is”.

Stay well,
              Ara and Spirit [R.I.P. 04/04/2018]  

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4 Responses to “Life’s Engineering… NM”

  1. Nicky Says:

    One can only profoundly miss what was profoundly loved. You would not enjoy being a a man that loves, cares, feels or thinks less than you do. You were made to be and experience so much…yes,it hurts like hell when bliss is replaced with pain…we treated our bodies as though they were made of steel,and our hearts as though they couldn’t be broken…that youthful ignorance was in itself a gift, that allowed us to enjoy the depths of joy and pleasure without fear they’d disappear.

  2. Ara & Spirit Says:

    Thank You Nicky for your very wise words. All so true! Thank You for sharing and understanding. Ara

  3. Steve Says:

    Nicky … very well said.

    Those are some beautiful skies you have. I love the open western skies. I feel your pain Ara. What can we do? All I know is those past times where people or our favorite dogs are gone, those were great times then and great memories now. I know that is all I have to hang on to. You have to do what you can to fight through what life gives us, always leaving something around the corner to make things interesting. Keep fighting. Keep talking here, about anything. That Mike Sanders is quite a guy isn’t he.

  4. Ara & Spirit Says:

    As you wrote, yes, always leaving something around the corner to awake our curiosity and Life… No doubt! I can’t wait until Mike writes a Book!!! I will be the first one to buy it and read it… Thank You.

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