Humidity defeats me in ways I probably shouldn't admit but do because keeping secrets at my age takes too much energy for too little useful result. Secrets are for the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, the ones who stand half a chance of accomplishing something they will be able to credit ... for a while.
Yesterday, some Zen Buddhist promo arrived in the mail. It was a book or a lecture or something and I skimmed it over and was grateful to find an invitation to "unsubscribe" from future mailings down at the bottom. In the skimming, I could feel the improvement-vortex of the language and direction and it's not as if I disagree ... I too have allowed myself to be swallowed and warmed by such invitations, but that time is in the past and today I am disinclined ... not negative or critical, especially, but just disinclined as I might be when confronted with a plate of anchovies.
An old army friend of mine, Barney, is into economics. For years he has taught it and traveled the world helping others to understand what he knows, as far as I can figure out, from muzzle to butt-plate. But when Barney gets off on economics with me, I zone out. The topic is simply not my cup of tea and pretending it is is false. Like lowering myself into someone else's vortex of improvement.
I love Barney just fine ... enough to tell him what my tastes and capacities are ... no-thanks to economics. No thanks to the vortex of correction and improvement: I have enough trouble setting my own course without adding my name to the manifest of someone else's ship. I suppose it is somewhere between egotistical and common-sensical.
I like Zen Buddhism, but pray to whatever gods there are to be spared a world in which others praise it.
Who knows ... perhaps I will take my stick for a walk today, as I try to do each day around 1100, and my neighbor's free-range chickens will be on the loose, walking purposefully from yard to yard, always clustered gaggle, scratching the earth and pecking. I love the fact that they seem to know what they're doing and appear oblivious to their own deepest understanding.
I've lost energy for a lot of things. But food, sleep, and a glass of scotch at bedtime are still welcomed. I suppose a time will come when waking up is off the list, or breathing, or maybe they'll be taken from me against my will. Dunno.
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