Random Thoufghts On A Sunny Friday Afternoon

 Old age and random thoughts seem to go together

Experience

 

Random thoughts from an old man. I am an old man and today my thoughts are wandering, and they wander along many a path.

At lunch today M’Lady and I were having a reasonably healthy meal of bitter gourd and stir-fried eggs with some nicely fried up chicken with really crispy skin on the chicken by the way. And of course sitting with us at the table, actually one underneath the table that would be choco and the other sitting between us on the floor occasionally sticking his nose in or over on my right-hand side as he would wish to, was our Doberman that we call rusty. He must think that we are nearly blind and terribly obtuse because as we're sitting there having our lunch and he's sitting patiently at the table waiting for his share he will nudge us every now and again with his nose. He'll just poke our arm until we look at him and he will say with his eyes where's mine where's mine? It's very hard to ignore her 50 / 60-pound Doberman sitting at the table drooling but he thinks we can do it. The fact of the matter is that we can't it's hard to ignore him. Matter of fact, right now as I sit at my computer, I can see him outside lying down on the grass chewing away on one of my old shoes. With old age and arthritis, I have trouble throwing a ball. My old shoes? They're easy, you can just flip them like a frisbee. It is much easier on the shoulder and the arthritis So; we play with my old shoes. And he is a beautiful dog to watch running!

I am truly having wandering thoughts today. And it crosses my mind that I live in very distinct worlds. There's the world of my memories. There is also the world of day-to-day life in our yard, which is an interesting yard that's full of vegetables and fishponds and turtles and bamboo and snakes and spiders and all sorts of interesting things. And then there's the world of the web. Now most days those worlds sort of interact quite organically and I flow from one to the other without too much trouble. Other days I like to stay in one or the other of the worlds and let the other two just sort of fade away. I'm not sure which day today is although as I'm at my computer and working on my blog I'd say the web world right now is dominant.

Rick and I go back a long way and that's a good thing. Nowadays we live either eight time zones apart if you fly one way or 16 time zones apart if you fly the other way. In any case he lives in Canada, and I live in the Philippines and he kindly and generously puts up with my emailing him all the strange little things that I find on the web. Depending on where my mind is, I may send him a story on how children get to school in the Philippines, or the latest greatest BMW motorcycle designed as a cruiser or anything in between. Certainly, many stories about classic motorcycles. Some political stories. And occasionally questions about what's happening in Canada. Expatriate that I am, I occasionally like to find out about the old country. As for the yard well, it keeps me sane it's a beautiful green place and there's always something going on in it whether it is fencing that needs repairing or bamboo that falls over power lines perhaps fish that jump out of the fishpond for no apparent reason. Always something to keep one going. Right now, at this very instant the new tomatoes that have been growing for a few weeks now, maybe a month they've got actual tiny little tomatoes on them, the bitter gourds have got blossoms, we're harvesting small amounts of peanuts, we've got new squash growing and all sorts of other interesting vegetables and green stuff. But the real joy is not so much what we're growing but the energy of the garden. It is an incredible benefit to my psyche even on bad days when I've got to use two canes or on even worse days when I gotta use my scooter to wander through the garden, there is energy galore coming out of the Buddha bamboo and the red palms and the vegetables and the fish and knowing that there's turtles in the underbrush and all the vegetables that are growing and flowers it truly is a glorious place to live in and walk in and wander with my mind in. I would not wish to say that we have gone green, but we try to be reusable. Our fences are made out of bamboo primarily and when they fall down well, we put up new bamboo and we build new fences. It's a marvelous garden. For me, the garden explains why mythology often
has our mythological ancestors either starting in, or living in, or defending gardens. I think it's where we are meant to be. Let's call it a memory handed down through the passage of time through our very genetic structure. I'm not saying anything for sure here. We're dealing with proto history and mythology, but they all seemed to point to a time when we were surrounded by a garden of trees and fruits and vegetables, and the problems came out when we left the garden and moved into the plains. Maybe that's genetically built into us, and we remember?

I find myself, and this is something I imagine goes with old age. Maybe it's just me but I think it's common. When they come out with a new motorcycle or a new fancy widget or gadget, I tend to compare them to the motorcycles cars widgets and gadgets that were around when I was young and impressionable. And I must say that as much as I acknowledge the new technology does work a lot better, I'm not convinced that they perform the function any better. Let me try to explain, but first, a little sip of coffee. At one point in my checkered past, I was a dishwasher. I’d get out of that steamy, stinking, hot kitchen at one or two in the morning and I would hop on my motorcycle. The kitchen I worked in was in downtown Vancouver. I lived uptown. Most nights I get out of the restaurant, and I take that half hour ride to where I was living and I’d and then I’d just keep going another five minutes and get on the highway. and I would just ride. I wouldn't be riding excessively cruising. I mean at 2:00 in the morning who wants a speeding ticket? I’d just cruise down the highway maybe at just before the American border I would turn right, get off the highway, go down to Crescent Beach turn left, and ride the side roads to White Rock and then cut back into the highway and go home again. It was sort of a pork chop shaped ride. By the time I got home I'd be feeling good. The thing about it is I was riding a 500CC Triumph Daytona. A little customized. It looked good and Rick helped me keep it running. It was 1960s technology that was developed in the early 50s and just worked on for the next 15 or 20 years. I look at the machinery now and I don't know that it gives the ride any more pleasure for all the new gadgets and gimmicks.

I think that's about it, by the time I check out the spelling and the grammar that's going to be another hour or two, so much for random thoughts on a Friday afternoon. 

Brian