Just Waving

A guy recently told me he liked my writing.  It was unexpected.  Maybe he talked to someone who said I didn’t think anyone listened or read what I put ‘out there.’  Maybe he did like what he read.  I do this blog occasionally.  Very occasionally, lately.  His comments came unexpectedly during lunch and I was surprised to hear that someone, anyone, was out there.  “Keep it up,” he said.  “You’ve got readers.”  Well.

I took a walk with another guy during this same recent weekend retreat.  The organization that hosted the metaphysically-focused event is soon going to hold its quarterly meetings further away and I said I wasn’t sure I’d be attending them.  “I talk and people just think I’m crazy,” I said.  Or irrevelant.  I say stuff about this search-for-truth-thing that people say they’re on, and I don’t get any feedback.  They stare at me blankly.  That’s my perception.  Me, I’m talking on the one subject I feel qualified to talk about—the search for ultimate meaning, ultimate reality, God.  It seems I’m talking gibberish.  Maybe I’m talking in the wrong setting, to the wrong people.  Are there any right people out there?

This friend told me that the group needed people like me and another ‘crazy’ member, an older guy I keep meaning to visit in the care facility.  “You guys say stuff that no one else says.  You shake things up a bit.  Your irrelevant comments add spice.”  I explained that my comments were utterly relevant to me, that I only paid attention to things that interested me, and that I only followed the threads which I felt intuitively were the most interesting and that rang closest to the profound.  I don’t remember if he answered me.  We had a nice walk.

I’m writing a book, Born to Wonder.  This January and February I took a break from contracting to work on it.  I’ve got a last few chapters, the other ‘bookend’ for this memoir of a curious soul’s adventures.  It bothers me that I haven’t finished it.  I’m busy now painting houses, building decks, installing toilets, putting up drywall.  It’s what I do.  I have the best family on the planet.  My wife and sons are magical.  This is my life, this thing that I am living and moving inside.  But I am bothered by not working on my book.  Maybe I need to say something.

This entry is my first step up this hill, against the biting wind in the blizzard, in the jungles of Panama through heat so oppressive and bush so heavy that I can’t see further than my machete through the stinging sweat in my eyes (places I’ve been).  I have this hill that I am dying to climb.  Maybe literally.  Fair readers, wish me luck—or just wave.