Behold the fresh new energy!
Most days I go off on my 2.2 mile exercise hike up the mesa. Every detail of Creation is etched into my eyeballs in the cool, clean air. That and 7,000 feet change how the sun feels on your body and the way the light breaks over the land. The colors are so saturated. Blue sky, brown dirt, green piñon and juniper. Today was just extraordinary: rain showers over green lower mountain slopes, lit up by the sun, and snow clouds on the peaks. Freaking exotic. Unbelievable! And no, I didn’t have my camera, but telephoto shots of these would look like something in the Andes.
(I didn’t know they made planets like this. Did no one tell us?)
Sensing opportunity in the wind, I also finally installed my Apple AirPort Extreme wireless router. Our wireless network (Qwest DSL modem and a Buffalo AirStation) has never been quite right, with occasional odd website misdirects and other quirks. It also only works when set up contrary to accepted practice, which mightily offends me. Until today, I suffered this because it worked, if grudgingly.
No more. First I cleaned the shelf and wiped the dust from all the wires, in ritual tribute to the gods. On the advice of a Qwest technician, I ran the phone line straight to the modem instead of routing it through my high-end surge protector. (Hell, it’s their modem.) After I had the Apple unit tucked gently into place, I flipped the switch and launched AirPort Untility. It told me it needed to replace itself with a newer version, so I let it do that. Then it told me the hardware needed a firmware update, which magically proceeded. Ready to rock, the software asked me a couple more questions, and BOOM, I had a new network!
That was too easy. Believe it or not, the Internet works better, too. Same DSL, but perceptibly improved. More images load at once. I feel the chi coursing through my iMac. The energy is happier, somehow.
Me too, chilluns, me too. For one thing, in the last few weeks I’ve mostly phased out having friends for business clients. Too many conflicts over pay, procrastination, and the like. The guilt and tension sapped my energy. I felt awful over months and months, something I tolerated because it was familar: that old learned tightness in the heart, way too familiar, actually, which helped me finally recognize just what was going on. I may have hurt a couple folks, but it has to be this way–we do this when we can, not when we should.
Now I’m mostly working for myself, from the center, for the first time in my life. All in, no drama. My new discovery, some 50 years delayed, is that this feels like a vacation. “Duh, duh, DUH!!!” my wife observed.
Exotic on my end, of course, ’cause no one ever said!
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Call me perverse, but I sort of thing that “guilt and tension” are the wheels that drive the human world. If we forked creatures were at peace nothing would happen. It would be a long snooze for all God’s critters.
We long for lethargy and freedom from all striving, but we won’t attain it while we’re in human form. (And will we ever become angels? Not in my lifetime.)
A seed of irritability was what we got from our mothers and fathers, and they from theirs. We all entered this world puking and crying and clawing for breath. That’s especially true here and now, on this continent, in the U.S. of A. (or Canada, with an asterisk), where we feel we’re on our own, without castes and classes to give structure and comfort. Hegel said something like that (though he didn’t have the pleasure of reading your blog for confirmation). Also Alexis de Tocqueville. If they didn’t, they should have.
Oh, you’re perverse, all right!
Understand about the seed of irritability. This is something different, knowing I’m in the zone.
What I want to know is, how do I get all those dead bastards to read my blog?!?
All us bastards, living and dead, love your blog. Feel free to quote me. The dead bastards are a club I reckon to join some day. Until then they have kindly nominated me as their spokesman.
I WILL quote you, by God!