Act 3, The Everchanging Landscape

Yoga. I guess it is the only option. I've just simply got to get back to doing some yoga. I mean, I was never any good, but we know that that is a false judgement...after all, it is a practice without a finish line. I've got to get back to some practice of yoga because I once heard someone say "A flexible spine will be reflected in a flexible mind."

I never could have appreciated how getting older would require me to become more and more flexible. I had this picture of settling in, reading more, relaxing more, letting go slowly into the twilight years. This is so not what's happening. We have to learn new stuff everyday, like how to do huge parts of our lives on increasingly tiny pieces of equipment. But mostly it is the minute to minute re-visioning of our lives, our futures, our physical and mental status that is such a big deal.

When I got divorced, many years ago, one of the shocks was that not only had I lost a lot of the past (I had counted on having P.'s memory of events to bounce off of), but I had lost my picture of the rest of my life (growing old together, kids weddings, family yardsticks). I had to re-vision my life. It was a painful process, but I was young and I did it.

But after all my talk about planning for old age and how we need to do a better job than our parents, I was knocked over by my needs and my inability to think clearly when I was so sick the past few months. Louis and Gretchen who were visiting got me through it. My kids offered the moon, but here I was practically too sick to get to a doctor, and terrified of going back to the States in fucking January, and there was a flu epidemic there, and I don't know any medical people there and Good God! I couldn't decide whether to put cream in my coffee, let alone what to do with my possibly sicker future. I was caught with my pants down, so to speak.

I know this can and does happen at anytime in our lives. I know this. But the odds are increasing daily that these big surprises are coming. How many people do we all know who have big plans for retirement and then, they drop dead without having a chance to live them out? How many people build a life around a spouse or a friendship, then find themselves alone?  I had a big story that didn't hold up when it was threatened. My big story was that the most important things to me were to be warm, surrounded by beauty, flowers blooming, to have real care, not a lot of medical appointments. By care I mean, nice food, clean sheets, foot massages, that kind of care. Sunshine, warmth, beauty. That was my story.

When I got really sick, I wanted to be near my kids and grandkids.  I wanted to see their faces often. Then the usual, "but I don't want to be a burden", but a sick parent is a burden. Is is less so, if I am in a warm country at least a day's journey and a thousand bucks away? I don't know. No.

So, I find I need the flexible mind and if I don't have my mind, I need some loving family to step up. I am going to start doing yoga and I am going to have more real talks with my guys and I am hopefully going to have the new and revised emergency plans that can kick in when needed.

I am still reading this awful book The World According to Monsanto: Pollution , Corruption, and the Control of the World's Food Supply. We are all going to face a tremendous amount of illness with the GMOs causing pancreatic cancer, reshaping of internal organs, world hunger, and the re-introduction of Dioxins into farming practices,and the Bovine Growth Hormones giving us pus and infection in our milk and so on and so on. As if the little old fashioned parasites weren't cause enough for concern! We have to have flexible minds, flexible spines, and a whole lot of loving kindness to pass around. Gracias a Dios y a mi familia, y a mis amigos.

Maybe someone has a suggestion of an amusing book to take my mind off things!