Considering Me
I’ve come to be slightly more gentle with myself, over time, and an example is my plan for this Monday afternoon which is drive over to the Cleveland High School track and walk around it either 12 or 14 times, depending on stamina in the moment, track milieu including weather temps, wind velocities, and sunshine-iness, and internal go-for-it level.
In the past, and not so long ago in the scheme and math of this 72-plus year-old story I would have said walking the track was simply a metaphor for my life – going in circles. I do remember writing that to my friend Bob Zimmerman, or saying it to him, and he passed on to whatever comes next Christmas day in 2010 meaning if I haven’t said it aloud or even given it serious thought since, that’s a long time. Somewhere and somehow and someways I have come to look at my life more with purpose, say following some sacred compass kind of thing, the way I call these Monday-thru-Friday Blogs internal ‘weather reports’, well, a vane up there on the old barn roof pointing the way – my path, this journey, now south, back north, way out there to the Provincetown east, and forever west. I believe I was born for the west. That feels right.
So when I go to the track today and if it is open and the gate not locked and available for some intensity of meandering – call me Ole Man River – I will know, in heart and mind and soul – I ain’t just heading around in circles, Bro, no, no way, every single spin again, 440 yards Baby – will be unto itself, each go-around a come-around its own – special. And if I’m paying real good attention, and I tend to these days and its been better for a while and see, that right there, that’s big old gentle me with me – well, you get to wake up in the morning after all these 72 years of days, you still get to wake up and the knees still twist (and shout) and, okay, shake it up Baby, and I begin to see everything anew, well, that for me is being blessed.
And there were a lot of years where the word “blessed” weren’t in my vocab and now I do not pass a day without it sometime spoken or thought, so, again, I’m on my path and it’s moving forward, ahead, even when it feels like reverse, sometimes, so, like I said, this is me being gentle in my (own) mind. With me. For me. Considering me.
