Tag: life

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Life

My Life So Far

An inmate of the Butterfly Pavilion near Denver

When I was attending Bowling Green State University, I kept a sort of journal off and on for the entire time. In fact, for some years after. So far in my life, I’ve stopped doing that. Maybe for the same reason that on my first trip to Paris, I didn’t take a camera. I made a couple of drawings of some of the decor on Notre Dame, though. That butterfly picture is not trying to make a statement, by the way. I just like it. I choose pictures that sort of go with the theme of my post, but that’s as far as it goes.

This is not an in-depth, heart-soothing account of a life of someone who has seen the light. I don’t know if I ever have. I don’t know if I ever want to. I’ve heard that you see the light as you’re dying, and I’m in no hurry. Not that it matters when it’s time, but still. This post is actually about regrets.

It is true, and I’m not the only one to have written the following, that I don’t regret anything I honestly tried to do but failed at, but I do regret things I didn’t try, or didn’t give an honest effort to. Hey, I coulda been a contender, right? For what, I don’t know, but still, hey! If you read this blog, you have no doubt noticed in the past six months or so that most of my posts have been repostings from Odd Godfrey. I’ve been vicariously circumnavigating the planet with them for about six and a half years as of now. I actually met them for the first time at their bon voyage party in San Diego, quite a few moons ago, but I’ve also visited with them every time they’ve been back in Vegas for a short visit. Their boat, named Sonrisa, says “Las Vegas, Nevada” under her name. (They use “her” so don’t talk to me about that issue.) Why this long bit about them? Because, when I was nineteen, I had a chance to try out for a summer job at Cedar Point, Ohio (headquarters of Cedar Fair, the amusement park company.) They had, and probably still do, musical acts preceding some of their shows, such as the first IMAX theater I ever saw.* I chose instead to spend my summer counting parts in an IBM warehouse in Boca Raton, Florida. I had a good summer, but I always wonder what would have happened to my life if I’d gotten a job at Cedar Point as a musician. I love making music, always have. I genuinely regret not giving it a try. Yeah, might’ve flopped, might’ve died by choking on a ham sandwich, maybe lots of stuff, but I should have tried it.

I also wanted to be a writer. My first wife, who to be honest would have been financing the effort, said no way, so I gave up on the idea. Could I have done that anyway, along with a series of jobs for which I was temperamentally unsuited? Maybe. Or at least at the same time as, but I chose to be conventional. Trust me, if you have any creative urges, give up on the idea of being conventional; it’s not worth it, and besides, you don’t really want to be, do you? Well, I write now, but so far nobody’s paying me for what I turn out. That will change, and luckily, my multiple attempts at a normal career (some of which were actually okay) have left me with some pension. Not a huge one, but enough to finance living in France, which I’ll be doing (I don’t say no to adventures anymore.) So, I’m a writer. Also, I have a YouTube channel for my music (nothing uploaded yet) so I’ll be doing a musician bit even though I’m, as my son points out, older than dirt. **

Here I am at 73 years old, starting a new life. Well, why not? I stretch and exercise regularly, so I don’t really suffer a lot of aches and pains. I do crosswords and play other mind games to keep sharp. And, though I’m slow, I still can run, and I’m still about as strong as I ever was. Yeah, that strong. Hulk has nothing to fear from me! Next post I’ll talk about why France, and what I’m planning to do next. (I hope to have some music uploaded shortly.)

Later!

*The first film was about The Grand Canyon, and quite impressive, if devoid of any plot.

**Things were just so nice and clean before dirt!

Categories
Life

Life

And Other Things

The fire was a few days after this was taken. Notice the infamous scaffolding. (The cause was determined to be an electrical problem.)

I took that picture from the street in front of Shakespeare and Company, one of my favorite bookstores. Rooms follow rooms, and it is an American book store, which is a bit of a nice relaxing thing for an American tourist. Now, on the 11th of April this year, in 20 days in fact, I will fly out of Las Vegas and, with a stop at LAX, to Paris, from which I will take a train to Poitiers (the town where the famous Eleanor of Aquitaine literally held court,) from which I will drive my rented car to Lizant, where we will have, as of March 29th, a second home. If you want more details, see Follow Me to France on this very blog. By the way (BTW if you insist) the region is now known officially as Nouvelle Aquitaine, or New Aquitaine. France feels the need to rearrange internal political boundaries every so often.

I was getting rather nervous about the whole thing. After all, I do speak French now, maybe at a level B1, somewhere around there, which is okay if things don’t get too technical, but not okay for banking, dealing with tradesmen, or for that matter talking on the phone. We want to make some modifications on our house, so I must see the Maire (just pronounce it, it isn’t difficult) and get official permission from the Commune (relax, that name goes back to Napoleon and means “municipality.”) Hot damn. And then there’s the issue of hiring tradespeople to do the work, or at least most of it, because I am, as my son will point out, older than dirt. And lazy. They don’t all speak English, and I don’t know if the Maire does either, although the sheer numbers of anglophones in the area suggests that he might have to. Not everybody is so happy about learning a new language as myself. (If I live in France, I speak French; sil je habite en France, je parle français.) Also, I have to arrange for all utilities to be in our name, get cable and Internet, buy a frigging TV, and a printer for our computers, plus some cookware and other stuff. And the sellers, bless them, are leaving most of the furniture, but not the living room set, so there’s that, and well, that’s a lot of stuff to do five-thousand miles from home, it seems to me. (There are some serious modifications to the building in store, too.)

So, I was getting nervous. Then I read a Facebook post from my friend Leslie, who is one of the Oddgodfrey’s from whom I regularly repost blog items. They are in year seven, maybe eight by now, of a planned five-year circumnavigation in their 40-goot sailboat, the SV Sonrisa, which is a great name for a boat. It makes me smile to think about it. (It means “smile” in Spanish.) Unfortunately, I can’t repost it here, but the essence of it is that they had a meal in a South African restaurant that she described as “maybe the best I’ve ever had.” Yes! If you want to have lived before you die, you’ve got to get out there and do it. There’s a saying I learned from the Oddgodfreys about boats: A boat is safe in port, but that’s not what a boat is for.

By the same token, you won’t get too many surprises or difficulties if you stay home, but you’ll probably never find the “best meal of your life” either. Living life means getting out there into where life is lived, which isn’t at home for most of us these days. I mean, what’s gonna happen? I’ll need to type into Google Translate to be understood? Heck, I’ve been there before, and it wasn’t at all dangerous. Hey, I’m going on an adventure! And I think everyone should. If it’s okay to say YOLO before doing something arguably stupid and silly, why not apply that philosophy to bigger things? Pack up and move to Tibet, if that’s what you want to do. I’m sure it will scare you, but that great experience is just champing* at the bit waiting for you to show up!

*Yes, it’s ‘champing’ not ‘chomping.’ It’s a horse thing.