Ola

I’d say some 80% of my life these days is lived in a realm of spontaneity. Something floats into my head, and – zap!! – I act on the thought. Barely measurable time between the thought and the doing. There’s an adventurous, exciting, mostly interesting quality to living this way. Including the screwups. AA literature talks about a scared pause between thought and action. For me, today, been there, done that. Now it’s the holy “Nah”. Do it.

Yesterday afternoon at work, the kids sleeping their Monday afternoon naps, the thought all of a sudden came into my mind to text my ex-wife Susan. I rarely do, and when I do, she doesn’t text back. Ever. So that behavior on my part is asking for some pain. Some more pain. But, I was right there in that 80% yesterday and walked off the patio, out of the sunshine, and back to my usual place at the dining room table, grabbed my phone, and texted Susan – asking if we could please talk sometime. Just a “How’s it going?” talk.

I miss her voice. I miss telling her stuff, pretty much all my stuff. I miss helping her laugh. Where I work they talk about the “Dignity of Risk”, and my texting her doesn’t really fall under what work’s talking about. But, some. She didn’t text back. It hurt a little – new pain – even ever-reminding myself all I can do is take care of my side of the street. And my side of the street these days is a place of mostly spontaneous act, and I had an urge and a need and I took the risk and the day went on.

I got up this morning and did my stuff – including huge gratitude that I got up again – and in the recliner the thought floated into my head that maybe my next ‘girlfriend’ will be a Mexican woman. Actually (my head said) that’s a must, so my morning walk took me back over the 94 freeway and down into and around Sherman Heights. I didn’t find a new girlfriend (sigh), but I did take and post a couple of cool pictures. And came back to type this – my March 1 weather.

Before I wrote anything else, before the walk, I wrote the sentence which follows, which may have next-to-nothing to do with all the rest of this, though I think it does.

Sometimes I want to be extra mystical, when I’m already mystical enough.