not so much yellow brick

10/29/2021 0 By BuddyCushman

I suppose what I’m about to write , the gist of it, is true for anyone. Writing earlier this morning I came to a stop, I sat here at a new desk for me, with my desktop back in operating status and the shifty sidewalk chair not quite high enough, but still. Just grateful. So I stopped and I thought about how fortunate and lucky and blessed and some degree of grace I feel living here in the Golden Hill neighborhood of San Diego. My ex-wife Susan’s parents lived out in the east county and I began visiting in 2009 and every year thereafter, after a while longer stays in a rented apartment in Ocean Beach, and I’ve been clear here on the couch many times I fell in love with the city and OB and all this ambiance – I dig the word milieu – so I was right here way earlier today, stopped, and truly grateful I’m here.

Which took my wife becoming my ex-wife – that’s pretty much the worst thing that’s ever happened to me – cause she wasn’t gonna move here from Portland and then she didn’t love me like before and getting going was the only way left for me, and I thought of that – Susan saying goodbye – and I flashed on walking the Cape Cod Rail Trail one June or July Saturday morning in 2008 and making a flash decision to move to Portland, knowing no one and with no waiting job, but I decided and I did and I met Susan and she introduced me to SD and this morning I was reveling in my good fortune to be slapping the keyboard here on B Street. And then the thought came I left a very cool job as a higher-up at Walden House in San Francisco, and a sweet apartment in Oakland – which as a city is spectacular – and that was the old me leaving for the leaving’s sake, gypsy boy, and crashing with my older sister on the Cape the summer of ’07 and getting hired at the HIV/AIDS house in P’town and meeting and hiring Andy at who’s house I was crashing that morning I decided on Portland, so, this isn’t even math, no quitting WH and Oakland and no sitting here this morning.

And sitting here this morning I thought I could probably go back to fourth grade and draw these lines of connection and weaving my unique web, and like I said up there at the top, I’m thinking probably you could too, and this isn’t rocket science and might be a big Friday afternoon yawn – but these days I have a personal vow to “Be here now” and to “Go with the Flow” and know, like Dick M always told me, “I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”

It was interesting, mostly. Sometimes I want to beat myself up for things I’ve done in my life. Of the turns and events of this life. And then I sit and think that no this, no that. No there, no here. No goodbye, no hello. No tears, no giving thanks.

Like I said, it ain’t rocket science. But, it’s the milieu of me this Friday.