After putting away my groceries, I ate a couple of muffins with my morning coffee and watched the news on TV. The only subject of which was seemingly being reported was the evacuation of the Gulf Coast area because of the oncoming hurricane. Then I switched back and forth between two baseball games because the Giants were playing on one channel and the Red Sox were playing on the other.
After coffee, I was going to shave but changed my mind because I had Monday off and wasn't going to work for another two days, so fuck it, that was one routine that could be put off for now. It was Capitol Park's turn for my weekly go round, and the wind had kept the afternoon temperature much lower than it had been through all of the middle of the week, when it was hitting a high of over one hundred degrees each day.
I'm not sure if too many folks who've managed to retire from "urban camping" get to pass their old sites very often after they get off the streets, but that tends to happen to me more often than not. On my walk around Capitol Park, I pass a relatively nondescript area which served as a place to sleep, eat, read, write and otherwise provide a refuge, albeit not a very private one, from the constant migration required by the average homeless person thanks to the efforts of law enforcement and property owners and the like to keep said transients from sullying up the desired aesthetic purity necessary to impress shoppers and restaurant patrons from the suburbs and their money.
I look at those places today and can't help but realize that I have come a long way from where I was, even though currently I'm nothing but a working class stiff when the truth be told. When I actually was tramping through the streets of this city, I had no idea what I would become, much less any idea at all what the future would hold in envisioning any sort of clear picture of what lay ahead for me. I know what I liked doing, but I never had any sort of passionate desire to rise up or excel at anything in particular, even what I love doing the most. I never wanted a family, or lots of nice expensive things, or even a home of my own. I only wanted to be happy for just that day.
And you know what? I still feel that way today. For example, this weekend I had what many people, especially in today's technologically advancing, thrill seeking, material obsessed society, would consider to be a dull, uneventful and unremarkable 2 days of living. But in my estimation, I wouldn't trade those 2 days for anything. I was in control of all of my time, I was artistically creative, and I enjoyed my freedom and everything was all right.
No, everything isn't perfect in my life nowadays, but the universe itself isn't perfect either. No one who learns sees a perfect world, because if they did there would be no ability to continue to think about how to make even good things better. I am grateful to that universe for all of the experiences and wisdom it has given me, even (and especially) for the shitty stuff because without it I would not know what the good in this world truly is.
Back when I was living with a rather large household in South Sac about fifteen years ago, there was a guy living there who was 81 years old, and he would always end the various tales he'd tell us of his past experiences with the statement, "Yes, I've lived a full life. No regrets." Well, I can't say that I've gone 45 years without regrets, but on the other hand, each day that I awake nowadays, those regrets become more and more insignificant and have no bearing on the big picture that grows and becomes more and more complex in its full story.
I believe now that I need to take more evaluation into my own life, and a good way to do it is to measure it by the year, month, and even the week getting so exact as to contemplate each day briefly at its end. I have learned over time that the future does not depend wholly on the past and the now does not have to be dependent on either. I will try to remember from now on that time is the most valuable asset I have, and accomplishment, happiness and even simply the state of being are all simply residing inside it. I can't wait to see what lies ahead, both in this plane of existence and the next.
(IMPORTANT NOTE OF GUIDANCE: This post is but one in a series called THE MUNDANE MONTH OF BLOGGING™. For those of you who are scratching your head right now and saying to yourselves, "What the fuck is he trying to prove?", Click Here, Pilgrim)
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