The Ancient Ways

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The Canadian geese are back. Flying between ponds and honking away. They certainly don't appear to be going extinct. I think maybe the flocks are getting bigger. Fine with me. I never craved cooked goose as a food or as a predicament. It tastes like fish smells, but fish taste much better to me.

The best tasting fish I think I've ever eaten was some smoked salmon a coworker had flown in from a small fish smoking industry in the coastal area of New England he had lived at for a number of years in the past. The salmon were wrapped in foil and placed in Styrofoam containers straight out of the smoking units, and they were still warm when they arrived by jet and special delivery at the Fort Bragg work site we were at.

I remember physically picking up chunks of the salmon that was juicy and I could literally chew the meat with my tongue it was so tender. I remember the feel of it in my mouth better than the actual flavor of the fish. It was so good I forced myself to be careful not to not grab more than a politically expedient share. I felt sure this one event might not be repeated, and it hasn't. Not to worry, there was plenty for everybody in the office with some left over for visitors.

Remembering how good that fish made me wish I had gotten the address of that place where they smoke the fresh-caught salmon. Who knows? I might have a windfall of some kind and place an order over the phone. My disappointment that I didn't ask for the address didn't last long. I soon realized that I could probably find the place myself with a search engine and Google Maps. I reckon I at least owe it to my taste buds to spend a little time looking them up and finding out their asking price.

There is a family pond just down the hill from my house that's stocked with a variety of fish. I hardly ever fish there. It was built by my father and two younger brothers while I was away in the Navy. In fact my father and mother bought this farm while I was gone. They had 15 acres they had bought when I was around thirteen years old. When I returned from the Navy they owned nearly two hundred acres.

In a way, this fairly recent matriculation of my parents into being property owners was something I had to deal with. They owned no real estate at all until they bought that first fifteen acres. We always rented previous to that first piece of land. My father was around fifty years old then. I arrogantly thought we must be rich just because our family owned a house and some farm land for a change. It went to my head and I got called down more than once for acting out with false pride.

When I got out of the Navy and my parents owned both the fifteen acre farm and a 160 acre farm I didn't know how to contain myself, and so I hitch-hiked around the country a few times until I could calm down. To suggest that I get extremely excited about having to deal with unplanned event when I was young is not an exaggeration. It takes even less inspiring spontaneous events to get the same result even now. Experience doesn't seem to promote a more dismissive attitude.

For a long time I didn't have the words to express my fits of ecstasy and despair. I certainly didn't like the descriptors coined by the psychiatric or psychology domains. They made me feel hopeless and quite possibly insane, and they still do. If I use medical terms to describe my mood swings my listeners have a tendency to avoid me. If I describe the same events using astrology, only a few listeners will fade away. If I describe the same set of circumstances using the lingo of the I Ching, the sa-me crowd usually leans forward in anticipation.

The most promising aspects of my quest for individuation was learning new ways of describing why and/or why I might wander off the beaten track to indulge my voracious curiosity. The facts surrounding my penchant for homeless wandering are that my spiritual quests (questionings) led me into psychedelic drugs like LSD, and later on, studying the occult languages for diverse ways to describe how my extreme reactions to life's constant surprises. This unorthodox behavior proved to be a more natural way for me to express the deep emotional responses that a sudden vacuum of uncertainty might evoke from my person.

Part of the difficulties I experienced while trying to express myself in a way that satisfied both myself and others simultaneously, was that I had no passion for disciplining my mind. On the contrary, I like being undisciplined very much. I like not knowing what to expect from the way I interact with the world as I understand it.

The best lingo I found for dealing with me and with the world external to my nay-me-d personality was the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the Book of Changes (I Ching). Unlike astrology and psychology it used the labels of the forces of nature to make useful metaphors that keep the inner and outer world from blaming me for what goes on around me. It teaches it's adherents to live a life of no blame.

I got blamed for things a lot when I was young. Shit happens. Things change. I found that attitude hard to live with. I needed my own way. I needed my own way so desperately I cruelly abandoned loved ones. I still do. Nothing has changed much except that I can explain myself with descriptions even people who live by instinct can easily comprehend.

It's with the tool of writing that I explore outside the my current limits. I write to individuals as if myself and I write to unknown crowds of people as I were all of them united, and nobody needs to know why or how but me. They can't. They can not know why or how because impossible. This state of impossibility doesn't exist as it does because I have anything to do with it. I can't know why or how anybody else does what they do by the same reasoning.

The thing about getting older that's scary to just about every older person I've talked with is the notion of losing their mind from senility or Alzheimer's dis-ease. It is not only dreaded by aging people themselves, but the younger people around them that are obligated in one way or the other to take care of them.

A friend came over while I'm writing this blog entry to seek relief from the insanity of his mother losing control and lapsing into paranoia about her food and drinking water being poisoned. He had to take her to one of the regional hospitals and stay up there for a couple of days. She's not any better, and if she follows the path my mother did, it will only get worse.

In a way, it can't be that bad yet, she still recognizes him as her only son. The real problem for my friend is that his mother was the only support his senile father has had. He hasn't been left alone for a couple of years now, and his wife is apparently close to being institutionalize herself.

It's probably even more tedious for me because there ain't nobody here but me. I can't explain what that's a pattern I'm used to. I have the address of one child in Washington state, and I don't know where the other ones or their mothers live. There is a reason for that. They don't want me to know where they live. They only want to know if I'm dead yet. I guess I begged with my horrid behavior to be regarded in this despicable manner. No blame.

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