Rainy Day Monday

Back in the city.  I woke with Laura so I could make us coffee before she headed home.  Madigan was excited by all the activity.  It was raining when we left. I carried the big umbrella.  She loaded her red smart car. Then was off.  Madigan and I walked back from the parking lot.  We’re a bit forlorn when she’s gone.  

I had thought I was going into the clinic this morning but am instead working from home. No doubt I was confusing booking the schedule. I’ll be at Docside tomorrow in person This Friday I begin my 10 day 2 week work cation. I ‘m going to seek out a lake for daily bikini swimming in the morning while working virtual with Starlink in the later morning and afternoon.  When I sailed I wore shorts or a sarong.  Now I love being in a lose yoga skirt.  I associate the feminine with anything but hanking on wrenches and heavy lifting. I like the artistic self, enjoy reading and riding, find myself thinking of sketching again. I used to do that and find real solace with pencil and sketch pad.  Reading Venice Sketch Pad about artists in Intaly really inspired me.  I loved the sketches my accountant returned with from his Venice trip. It’s definitely a place I’d like to go before it disappears beneath the water. I’d like to return to Ireland too and Berlin if only to see the wall.  South America and an African safari sometimes call but mostly these days I want to walk through galleries and enjoy the art and space.

Writing is a joy for me. The thought to fingers to page typing.  Free association. I have this idea I must soon create plot and story or consider the reader.  Now I’m just journaling and ‘squeezing the pus from my brain’.  All the thoughts of self and anima and animus, the shadow and self.  Exposing these in writing. I imagine creating a different blog for discretion.  My exercise in transparency has gone on for a while. I wonder about re creating a private and public life in writing. The authors who are different race or gender and the intellectuals whose idealized writing has no relationship to their lives.

I exercise my writing like a musician playing scales.  Journaling is like that.  If I were to be serious I’d edit pieces and consider audience and work for money.  I’ve books in the works but little drive to complete them.  I’m rather enjoying the life I’m living now doing things for the personal.  Loving self.  Self indulgent after a life of service.  

I often think of retirement but enjoy paying the mortgage and no thinking seriously of money.  I can pay to have someone else do repairs and feel my income will support the exercise. I like that I can buy Laura jewelry at Trev Deely without worrying about rationing.  Retired without an income I’d be living on public pension and savings.  Not so middle class.  Right now I’m still working but not so many hours as I once did.  More a 40 hour week compared to the old 80 hour week. I don’t like the 70% real taxation we pay in Canada , the high cost of rent and high cost of living.  I imagined moving to the country because I could continue to work but overhead would be halved .  Then I persévérantes. I’ve a boat to sell and a storage locker to exorcise but instead I’d rather read, watching tv and put my head in the sand.  I’m in God’s waiting room thankful to be able to work when so many others are dying and becoming ill.  I don’t have days of activity so enjoy work as it gives meaning and value and organization to my day.  Sometimes I just want to have a 3 month vacation to rest. Then I’d become bored and reboot with some new project, travel, writing. 

That’s what I want to do write and travel and take pictures.  I’ve got the means to camp and fish and hunt as well now but expect hunting and fishing might take a back seat to lie reading on a lawn chair.  My mom gardened at my age and my dad did about the same , outfitting a van and taking a canoe to drive about the country camping on his own for a week or so at a time leaving mom back at home. Then the two of them would drive about in their Slumber Queen visiting Good Sam RV parks in the US socializing with other folk who had retired.  They shared in common raising kids and Dad had his connection with the military and mom with other Christians and church.

I’m rather alone with a dog .  I imagine Travels with Charley and Steinbeck my fascination when younger. I love Somerset Maugham travel tales and yet here I blog and don’t indeed consider the audience. What would they like to hear. I’ve a wealth of knowledge of my fellow man and woman, expertise galore but haven’t found a vehicle for that. I once was happy as a poet.  Today I prefer prose though poetry certainly had it’s appeal like the rudimentary sketching I so enjoyed.  I did a picture of Shinto I once put on the wall and enjoyed as a mother might her child’s art on the refridgerator door. 

Death is in the future. Something I never considered but do now. I don’t think about it but it’s there.  I more consider the back ache and declining physical stamina, flexibility and power.  I am going deer hunting in the fall but while I look forward to venison I’m not looking forward to getting the deer out of the woods after I shoot it. I’ve also grown more sentimental.  Vegetarianism beckons but it’s mostly mental decline.  Emotionalism rather than real spirituality.  God and I are one. I am eating God and God is eating me all the time.  I would do well to fast more and lose some of the weight I’ve acquired with recent sloth and the dullness of thinking know to the fat. 

Thank you Jesus for your Book. Thank you Constantine. Thank you Peter. Thank you God. Thank you all my teachers and mentors. Thank you for libraries and learning. Thank you for the day. Thank you for fashion, Thank you for the fine things in life. My friend Peter is baking and his excitement over making hamburgers inspired me to do the same. Perhaps I’ll take up bread making again It’s been many year.  If I was retired I’d do more of these things .  I’d love a garden but a hydroponic arrangement for tomatoes might be fine. My father and brother grew tomatoes.  It was a point of pride in the family.  Mom and dad did so much gardening older, renting land for the purpose, along side rail way tracks.  Survivalism runs deep in the Hay family.  Self sustaining. I enjoy reading of Graeme and Adell and their maintains the land that Ron and Adell bought.  Such an ongoing project. Personally I’d rather a high rise apartment though best like my truck camper these days, shifting view and self contained,  

Thank you God for this day, the rain, which is welcomed by the foliage Thank you for Madigan. Thank you for this body and this space. Thank you Jesus.