October 12, 2005

• Sometimes it feels like the Universe goes through periods of falling apart.

  
  

  Well, that’s not really a very good description. Maybe except for the “falling” bit. The Universe is in a fall season, and the leaves are falling off its trees.

  
  

  At the moment I (and evidently more than a few people in my life) are experiencing this, in various ways. Death. Loss of job. Car falling apart. Dead pets. Stuff breaking. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear we were getting into Mercury Retrograde.

  
  

  But we’re not.

  
  

  Within the past week, my relatively new digital camera headed south. Again. For the second time since I bought it. Which means it has to go back to Nikon for service. Again.

  
  

  The video card in my computer is 95% fuzzed out. Well, maybe not fuzzed, but if I have to reboot (or the power goes out) and the temperature in the room isn’t just so, it may take up to two or three hours before an image shows on the monitor. My scanner doesn’t work. Actually, there are two scanners in the house that doon’t work.

  
  

  All of which is somewhat distressing, since I depend on a chunk of my income to come from sources that rely heavily on imagery.

  
  

  Sometimes I just sit and wonder if The Great Big Who-Knows-What is trying to tell me that I am in the wrong field.

  
  

  Everything seems to be costing money these days. In neat round $100 increments.

  
  

  Part of this whole protracted process of moving and redefining my life seems to have one remaining “missing link.” I don’t have a $100,000-a-year job, but I seem to have the bills that go with the lifestyle associated with one. And that is an issue that needs to be brought into balance. An issue that will be brought into balance, as I begin a new phase of life.

  
  

  Real change is not easy to find, and to carry through.

  
  

  Sure, lots of us go about changing directions in the course of living our lives. I have done it, many times. But it never amounted to real change. It amounted to taking “the same old stuff,” and carrying it around in a wheelbarrow instead of a bicycle basket, and deluding myself that things had “changed.”

  
  

  Granted, maybe there are times when that is enough. Come to think of it, perhaps it’s enough, most of the time.

  
  

  This isn’t one of those times.

  
  

  Periodically– in the course of the past year– readers have left comments, asking if I am still talking about the same move. The answer is “Yes, I am.”

  
  

  Because this “isn’t one of those times,” moving means more than merely tossing my belongings into hefty bags, and tossing the heft bags into the back of a truck. Moving means looking at every single piece of physical, emotional and spiritual baggage I have ever owned, and making a deliberate decision as to what gets to be part of what lies ahead. And tying up loose ends.

  
  

  So when I seem like a certified nutjob because I mention that I have– on some level– been “working on” moving for more than a decade, it bears mentioning that I am not really “moving.”

  
  

  I am building a “clean slate.”

  
  

  And part of that “clean slate” has to do with leaving “lost” behind, and moving towards “found.” It has to do with leaving “image” behind, and moving towards “content.” It has to do with leaving “disconnection” behind, and moving towards “connection.”

  
  

  Maybe there’s craziness here. So be it. I am done with hitching my chances of having contentment to a societally acceptable wagon. I am also done with having my ostensible “functionality” questioned, just because I am a highly intelligent, college educated, 45-year old male with no ambition to accomplish, acquire, conquer and succeed.

  
  

  I have no beef with those who want to follow that path. It just isn’t mine; I won’t judge you by your choices if you don’t judge me by mine.

  
  

  Not long ago, as part of my “internal reorganization,” I found myself throwing away old files. This included some old income tax returns. I made slightly over $173,000 in what was my “most successful” year, well over a decade ago. That coincides with the period during which I was also the most suicidal, at least since my teenage years.

  
  

  You do the math.

  
  

  I know my own math. Complexification depresses me, and weighs me down. Simplification uplifts me, and fills me with happiness. And the capacity to love and to be love.

  
  

  That’s my math.

  
  

  It’s the math of Being. It’s the math of Presence and Aliveness.

  
  

  Then again, maybe I have it all wrong. But I don’t think so. The Great Universal Whatever-It-Might-Be has shown me something. A possibility.

  
  

  And I have accepted the invitation….

  
  

   

  • 11:12 am
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