These days are too much most mornings, I want to say they are wild and unruly with my heart, but really they are more subtle and slow. It’s not far beyond sunrise and I am already knee deep in the day that has yet to exist. I know the pattern, I know the outcome, it’s the same as most other days, I’m sure of it. In all my self-centered wisdom and foresight, I can see the future, if not create it. Self-fulfilling prophecy right. If you build it, they will come right. If you dream it, you can do it right. Now I’m starting to sound like I have hope for a better tomorrow when one doesn’t even exist but let me talk about the doldrums of my dailies and for sure tomorrow exists and so does the next day and the next day.
I keep flashing back to that beautiful two-story craftsman home, a deep greenish black, with an even deeper trim color. Off set pitched roof, simple front porch, actually more like a stoop. I have a love for these homes, I’ve been painting them for 20+ years. I would love to only work them and nothing else. The architecture, the detail in the work, the craftsmanship – they are beautiful works of art, even the simplest ones. I think of this one I had just seen in this movie, it brought me back to thinking of her, of course. Not out of longing or whimsy but out surprise to have met someone that had the same passion as I for such things. I’ve not known many to have passion as I for something other than sex or the need to not be alone. I felt as if we could have restored homes like this, it was a good feeling, to connect with someone on something other than personal needs.
These gray days, not in my heart so much as they were, but the sky’s, filled with smoke and fog and turmoil and just gray. Not the gray heather that seems so soothing in a pair of sweatpants, not the dove gray of your favorite Levi’s back in 1986, but the medium murky gray that makes the world slow and cold, the gray I wish to avoid at all costs. Give me rays of sun and blue sky’s abound, red sunrises, pink, orange and purple sunsets. Give me springtime mornings and Southern California summer days. I dream all this heading into winter, heading into a colder season then I’ve had ina while. My time in the people’s republic of San Luis Obispo has come to an end, soon I will be in The Pass of the Oaks, where the winter mornings are in the 30’s and evenings in the 50’s. It’s a perfect time to move there, on the cusp of winter and my daughter moving from there to LA in 3 weeks. God’s timing impeccable once again.
At best I try to follow the road that is laid out before me, no map, no blatant clues. I try to read the signs but know there really aren’t any to decipher, there is no definite in what direction my life should go in. I go back to the river analogy; life is a river and I must be the reed and shift in the direction the current is taking me. I’ve learned that to do so I must be slow in my movements and choices, I must alert to what is around me, precise. My head on a swivel only detracts from my focus, looking behind me, searching the horizon; how does one follow a path they can’t see especially if they are not looking around them. I think we write our own signs most days, give ourselves our own directions. I can say I’m in tune with the universe but really it’s just my perception of what is happening around me, compounded with my memories of the past and fears of the future.
For all I’ve done with building this van, to the ending of that short lived love affair, to needing to move out, one could say, “It’s the universe telling you to go live on the road.” Seems logical. But one could also say, “Your parents are getting older and your aunt needs more care and you’ve saved the money to buy a house and you’ve such an affinity for these craftsman homes, you should buy a place.” It’s all perception when it comes to rationalizing our lives, choosing our paths. Combine that with our desires and our choices are made, our directions are created. So now you deal with I, the one who works towards having an unattached perception to the world around him and shying away from all desires, choices become difficult, seeing direction becomes difficult. Because all there is, is right now.
And as I’ve been writing this the sun is starting to break through the light gray that’s being held high in the sky. Obviously everything I think I know is up for revision. Eventually the color of the day will matter not, I will fall back into the beauty of the moment no matter the circumstances. It comes on slowly if I’m aware for what is happening right now, it can’t not. Each moment is perfect in its own way and I just need to appreciate it for existing and then let it go.
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