Force without Resistance

Three days have passed from my leaving the house behind. The days leading up to then were full of special moments. I talked with many people, saying goodbye to them and the place I have called home for so long. The last hours before I left were magical in the way everything fell into place. As endings go, it was a good death. In visiting close friends since then I have gotten much support and encouragement for setting out on our next journey. Getting ready to walk is now my focus, clearing out my "house" now accomplished, and when I am sure some necessary paperwork is in order I will launch happily. Resistance to this final preparation is futile, a calm force of determination will keep the world rolling. Patience is a lesson, a way of living.

Open

My door has been open since I lost the keys. All the miles I have walked and the many States I have traveled in and I dropped them in the grass somewhere in Kansas while walking around the block. Sure, it was a three mile block and getting a new key for the van was costly but the key to the house has remained gone.
The house was closed to even sunlight for a long, long time so I have left all the doors and windows wide. All of my things are packed into the van. I washed the blankets for the last nights' sleep on my bed. The nice folks who are buying the house have told me over and over not to worry over leaving the last few things when I go for which I am grateful. I was talking to a friend on the phone and at the end of the call she sincerely said, "Congratulations for your homelessness." I feel good about it too. After I spend a few days doing maintenance on the van I will continue our walk for diabetes awareness in the lower forty eight. though it took all of Spring to prepare I have accomplished much. Grateful to be able to give things to friends they can use while having family to keep my tools and boxes of family photos etc so I may walk and have a home at four close friends who have offered whenever it may be. I feel I am loved, and I love them all.
Thursday at four I will meet with the owners and settle this chapter, lesaving this house for my new home, the World Wide Open.

three days 'till I am Home Free

Three Months since I began to leave. Every day giving away things,just things. Focusing on an empty house. A Home Free. Three more nights to sleep in the bed I'll leave behind. For many weeks I have been saying goodbye to people, places and faces I have known since I was a child,to the inner workings of the city. How it has changed and grown in these decades. There are buildings now where the woods once were. Paved paradise and put up a dormitory. The back way is now a four lane thru-way. The UPS jet engines drown out the hawk recording that plays from atop the city com-tower that repeats every three minutes to keep the birds from nesting. Even in the depths of winter it chirps and screeches. It finally has worked on "this" bird...




I know I haven't been writing much lately. I have been spending my time being quiet while I prepare. That time will be over soon enough. Maybe I'll start making sense.

Mulligan on life.

I have never swung a club at one golf ball but the slang for a free try can apply to this tale...



Two Sundays ago I was standing in line to pay a bill and I received a call from a friend of my Boy to tell me he was in a hospital over five hundred miles away. His liver and kidneys had shut down. I fought the urge to drive to him with the clothes on my back and just enough money in my pocket to pay for gas. Within hours I was on the road with all my things and Nice riding "shotgun" in the van. I was at his side the next morning in time for the doctors daily rounds when they ordered dialysis. A catheter would have to be put in his neck, a vein and an artery tapped to filter his blood to save his life.
He had taken a fistful of aspirin for the pain he was having from drinking too much alcohol for far too long. Already his body was breaking down, the overdose of aspirin sealed the deal, his kidneys shut down, his liver began to disintegrate into his bloodstream his stomach unable to function. Apparently this alcohol induced "brilliance" happens to many who think where one will not work a handful will. My son asked me to share this story despite his embarrassment which can be hard to swallow. With dialysis he was able to survive and is recovering after two weeks, others have suffered through three months of temporary renal failure before their kidneys resumed functioning again. Today he is a changed person, is convinced he will never drink again. He was given his" Mulligan" on life.

Sidestep...

Sometimes circumstances throw me a curve ball and I have to step back from the plate. The train is barreling toward me and rather than fight with an immovable force, taking a few steps to one side or the other I am free from harm. Sometimes the ground is hard and the row takes more time to hoe, or the soil is too wet to sow. The storm sends debris across my path and the rain floods over the bridge. I have had to step aside, toil in hard dirt, be patient while the waters rise then fall to enrich the fields. Some things cannot be rushed into or away from. For a little longer I need to step aside and be still before I step out into the open. Until then...

A house.

The door was swollen from the leak in the roof. The carpet by the doorway was frayed and bunched. The mail was piled at the door below the mail slot forcing me to put my whole body against it. It was mid-January and bitter cold, but still the harsh odor of the house hit my nostrils like no other smell I had ever experienced. For more than a year I had a favorite song that I played constantly. Recorded by Tom Waits ,"The House Where Nobody Lives" was the title. This was that house in every way. From the piles of newspapers to the peeling paint. The windows were covered in layers of contact paper and blinds under curtains and plastic. It had been years since anyone had entered the house. It would be years of cleaning and clearing out the mountains of hoarding before bare floors would be found all through it from a lot of work and a bit of love.. Like a line in the song:" Without love it's just a house where nobody lives." It was my job to bring some love back into it. To sort through the mountains of trash and save pictures of the family and a precious few salvageable keepsakes.
To me the house was a place to heal from severe nerve damage to my spine, the pain of my recent separation and later divorce. To change my way of life, shed the baggage literally and figuratively. The house was my "reality check" showing me what I could become if I kept collecting things until I was old. Living in the house allowed me to create World Guy Foundation and dedicate myself to walking across the country for diabetes awareness. This smelly, cluttered, house destined for destruction saved my life.
Now all these years later it is time to leave. I have cleared it out and made it ready for the next family to make it a home. And I am soon to be back on the road to share diabetes prevention and control with exercise. My new job, my new life.

The Whole World and the Paddle

If you had the whole world to take with you, what would you bring?
A collection of patchwork and paint? A brush or two? In a world where traveling light can save a life, how much water, how much food? Plenty of socks and a spare shoe selection? And what would you keep in memory? Your borough of rocks, books and music boxes? I'll take the feathers. Should you find yourself over full with plenty, what worldly goods are worthy to sit in another's window box? I had one, until today when I gave it away; the window, that is. A small portion of pots and an ax, along with needle & thread may make it's way into your wagon on your journey. Left with the choice of a wagon filled, would you take a paddle in such a case you where find yourself up a creek? I have the paddle, brand named Feather. And should you find yourself walking away from the wagon. Ax, feather, or paddle? The lightest burden, memory of a gift given in return for a smile.

For the last time...

For the final steps I carry you
One last clutch hold and careful traverse
So heavy the weight lifted then moved again
Filled with treasures not forgot or ever again espied
This chest, a treasure of the past
How oft I have borne you
Till now, to the step of a new home
I will always have it in my heart
My minds eye, the treasure chest
Filled with another's treasure
you

Possesion "haircut"

Thinning out a lifetime of things is proving to be a lengthy task. Every day I have found a home for clothes,books,furniture,trinkets and more. Someone even took the collection of rocks and shells. At the nearby grocery I saw a bicycle parked outside. It's seat was covered with duct tape. It had front and rear baskets filled with clothes and food supplies. I quickly went home and removed the comfortable seat from my old bike and returned to find the owner was a homeless man, he was taken aback by my gift and offered to give me something in return. I needed nothing and wished I could do more for him. This daily "give" sometimes feels like a chore. By days end I feel richer and have less. Still, I have more to part from and have begun to move the possessions that I will keep to their new lodgings. This is taking longer than I thought. With patience I will be back on the road in good time. With less clutter on my mind I am sure.

the flier...

While clearing the stacks of newspapers from the bed that she had placed there one day at a time for years it slipped out and fell on the floor. It was an advertisement leaflet, one of those that come in an envelope filled with dozens of local business ads. I had been bagging the newspapers for hours, for days really, had been careful to make sure there was no hidden treasures and had found nothing but years of newsprint. It was as if this flier jumped out from the stack as I was placing it in the bag. All around the edge of this coupon was handwriting. The back of the paper was filled with words by the same hand,"J.B."...

"Up down all around
in a circle we go
In out run about
Jump and shout
Having fun you know
Here there everywhere
Smiling faces you see
Having fun in the sun
Chasing each other with glee
Out to the country
Then back to town
All the sights to see
Here there everywhere
Dashing to and fro
Back and forth
East North South West
Here there everywhere
All none some one
Cold warm cool hot
See the flowers
After April showers
Plant a seed feed and weed
Watch the flower grow
Play work
Walk run skip to
Nest Home abode den nest

Wholesome fun books or The Fun Books"


"Who am I?" Fall 2001, J.B.
A person a proper noun I me
client customer patient (Dr's)
resident occupant citizen
subscriber pupil teacher a genre
child (of parents) sibling cousin
parent worker viewer buyer
seller sometimes sad sack sometimes
clown rider passenger driver
biker stroller swimmer participant
fan she or he or him male or
female this one

I am all these yet I am the one and only me

worker helper
owner buyer seller bargainer
barterer
thinker talker pupil teacher
parent child sibling cousin
friend aide doer talker listener
sewer sower gardener
cook
consumer reader writer
painter cleaner sweeper mower
trimmer pruner planter picker
grower cultivator builder
player listener viewer
dreamer
To me I am I or me to others he or she
user loser winner
participant fan viewer user
girl boy man woman child
baby lady or gentleman
owner user buyer seller
client customer patient teller
artist painter maker tinkerer thinker
I am this one he or she."


Fly away flier...

post note: blogging is like writing backwards; reverse storytelling.

Buddha's Last Ride to a New Beginning

In my World of clinging to all possessions like memories, the time had come to remove him from my mantle. In the basket on the handlebar he went. The wind visibly blew a layer of dust from his bald head and happy belly as he faced forward to the sunny spring morning. He smiled as we weaved along the sidewalks pulled by the Nice dog steed who was possessed with moving forward to the top of Broadway, over Phoenix Hill, down to Spring Street to Beargrass Trail along the Creek it is named after. Through to the trailhead and along the edge of the park and by the Cherokee Triangle, by the simple Memorial stone erected to my mother then up to where the Art Fair is held the weekend before the Kentucky Derby. I had found the smiling plaster cast statue while clearing out an apartment years ago. Later I met the man who had made the figure when he worked at a local business, he recognized the mark he made on it's base. That man is dying of cancer now and I fancied riding part of him on a final trip around the park, his essence bouncing in the basket ahead of me. We made our way back to the Songs for Seba to my artist friend where the Smiling Buddha will be reborn, cleaned, repainted, and passed on to another's mantle.
One less thing. One more pleasant memory. A weight lifted.