empty mind, filled mind
I come to the Blog today with empty mind. Swirls and whirlpools, gurgling noises from deep in the woods, the sound of a cloud passing overhead. I went out to the curving driveway here in the home in which I rent a room now – this is nine days – and with a push broom tired my arms out clearing endless pine needles, hoping that the focused effort might open a trap door in the old W.B. brain and let loose just a bit of daylight. I bet I couldn’t tell you the difference either way.
Yesterday’s Blog was a fun story about childhood days and getting older days and hats and cigars and homeowners glancing out their windows. Today it’s different. Like a guy I know says – chop wood, carry water. It’s kind of one of those days. Yesterday I arrived 15 minutes early in the parking lot of the young man I was being hired and trained to work with, and sitting in my car I texted my boss and told her not to bother showing with the high-tech Ipads and Ipods and double secret handshakes and all the documentary gadgetry, because on second thought – which was an extended long thought over the weekend – I’d had enough concerns about my abilities to perform – not that recording crap – but basic needs to help this young man remain safe and healthy, with his 24-hour seven-day nursing care and about 17 posted-on-the-walls schedules and formats and requirements of just what that day needed to look like for him. I’m sorry, like, lighten up, that’s just not me and as I’ve been officially retired these last 10 years and will not make a decision to do something which brings me stress and discomfort and genuine concerns about me being the right guy, I told her (my boss) thanks for being one of the paths leading me to Encinitas, but this isn’t me and why go in and hang with the guy another day – so he’d soak in my hipness – when I knew in my heart I wasn’t going to come back.
So I called and asked her to read the text and she did and called back and said they didn’t have anyone else who’d work better for me and thanked me for being straight with her early on (I may be an asshole in her young mind), and I drove back to the big house with my big, fairly empty room (my furniture stranded in a gracious garage in Portland) and I immediately began sending out resumes to some of the weirdest places for the weirdest work and went out with a legal pad and pen and sat in the balmy sun and wrote down everything I could think of to make money and to save money, and there were some very cool ideas and among them no guarantees, and I’m good down here for quite a while and a while can kind of be as long I vision it – when I live something like a Spartan and keep on keeping on reaching out to the Universe with that question of perpetual spirituality – “Now what?”
So, everything I did yesterday and everything I’ve done so far today, including re-juicing my Facebook Art Page and my Patreon Patron page and my Fine Art website page – it’s all me chopping wood and carrying water. And – and I knew this back at the first sentence – empty mind is full mind. Plots, schemes, devotions, vast intentions, dreams and wishes, hopes and vows, always asking for help and always being kind enough to accept it, open arms and clear clarity about what feels right, going all-in and barely poking my toe into the ancient and rather chilly ocean. Empty – full.
My prayer is that I get a chance to do this all again tomorrow. Like they said back on WBCN back in Boston back in the day – If the creek don’t rise and there ain’t no meltdown.