Doesn't matter

There was a really sweet moment, in Adult Swim's new Rick and Morty series. Morty and his sister Summer have a real, intense, powerful memento mori moment (which sort of thing happens a lot on that show)...

But afterwards, they get posited some challenging and direct questions, to which they smile and say happily,

"Doesn't matter."

I see this (minus as in-your-face memento moments as pictured above) in my garden. Something has happened to some plant; it's still rooted, but it has been sorta kinda bent and twisted and knocked over. It's nothing like it once was; I'm amazed at how alive it still is, given its current state.

Sound familiar?

And yet the plant smiles. It loves the sun, it loves the attention of the bees, it's very happy. Knocked over? Nearly ripped out of the ground? Brought down from three feet high to three inches high?

Doesn't matter.

Ram Dass asks "Where are you? Here. What time is it? Now." It's certainly more poetic, but it interposes very interestingly with Morty and Summer's smiling statement:

When is it? Doesn't matter. It's now. Where are you? Doesn't matter. You're here.

It's definitely a morning to put "doesn't matter" to the test, as Tolkien often posited ("coming to the test" is huge in the Lord of the Rings books). But here it is, today. I'm nearly unable to operate this computer keyboard; I'm unable to five-finger "touch type," I'm using mainly index finger and thumb, especially with my right hand. The mouse presents its own problems. I was hoping to write some music, whoich maybe maybe maybe I'll do but then again maybe not; I may need to lie down and expect, with hope, the "elimination issues" to behave a little more accomodatingly. And yes I know that word has "commode" in it, let's not go there, lexically at least, for now.

So I can't eliminate the way I wish I could, I may not be able to write music the way I wish I could, I'm almost unable to two-finger-type even for short things like this. Here, and now, at least. But I go to look at the back garden, I feel the sun and smell the air, and I am left with as inescapable a conclusion:

When is it? Doesn't matter. It's now. Where are you? Doesn't matter. You're here.

No mater where you are, gentle reader, the same is true for you. Go outside and feel the sun however you can. Feel the wind and taste the air--where I live, the air changes every five minutes or so, it's quite amazing. You are where you are; when, is simply now. Like me, you ma have neurological nonsense that is preventing you from doing what you want.

Doesn't matter. You're here, it's now. 

Which is, actually, a pretty nice place to be, if you just see it for what it is. Here; and now.

Hard enough; easy enough

Days are darker and lighter than I had expected they might get.

I've acquired a new pointless pain in my right arm. Yeah, the one Finn the Human keeps losing on Adventure Time. Life imitates art, I don't need. At least his newest version of an "arm" involves a flower. Mine, however, reminds me more of this one... although my pain is in the upper arm, my expression looking at how my right hand is failing me is very much Finn's.

I think I'm coming to a new peace with describing my current state-in-life as "retired." One of the associate deans of Yale who was there when I was a student there, is finally retiring, and he has been lauded beautifully by the Yale official news system.

For years, he has carried the "mythical yale beast" staff in the annual commencement processional. (I think the only one he missed over 30+ years was for the birth of his son).

I was not publicationally, or sadly, in any way, lauded at my departure from my former employer; the most I got was the phrase "the end of a forty-year tradition" the year I finally couldn't play the organ for the school's commencement service any more. But, as I said as we opened, days are lighter than I expected they might get. Ram Dass says things like "if they don't appreciate you, that's on them, but if you are stuck expecting them to appreciate you, that's on you;" and there, at least, I don't need to be stuck any more. As Finn in Adventure Time has said at similar crucial-choice moments, "I'm done... I'm done."

But, also darker... I haven't managed to get outside simply to enjoy light and air, for too too many days. I'm not in the "I have to sleep now now now" state that I used to be in, but I do spend a lot of time in bed... I think, primarily because I have surrendered control to my elimination system. I don't wear pants around the house and/or in bed, which I'd love to do for warmth, but I don't want to delay my arrival in the bathroom by having garments in the way taking too long to deal with and get out of the way. Sometimes Alan the Bladder screams urgently for attention, and as for the mis-functioning of my large-intestinal-elimination system, the Drainer of the Dregs as the Chinese medical system calls it, I have no @$@#$ing idea what it's up to or what it wants or whether it's going to behave in any way according to my wishes. I don't want to be out of bathroom range if a Hindenburg-esque moment should arise, and trust me, I've had warnings and zero-warning moments. I do have "adult garments" which I never go without, which have in fact saved me on an occasion or two, but to spare you the details all I'll say is even saving me "enough" means "no fun." Even though it does keep me from "disaster."

But back to "retired"... if I look back over what I've done over the course of years, I see the Yalie Overachiever Pattern of doing two or three completely unrelated jobs at once. In the independent school world, they basically suck you dry. They want you to teach that, and maybe that, and coach that, and could you coach that too, and we also need this... and each one of those might as well be someone's 3/4 or full-time job.

So if I were to simply stack all the stuff I've done, and see how high that compares to just one job over the same course of time... it's very, very high.

So yeah, it's ok to retire. MS or not. I've done ... a lot. It's OK to retire. And do other things. Like, who might have expected it, to enjoy being alive?

Which I'm not doing a lot of right now.

But if I can do nothing else... that needs to change. I have no idea how to do that. But I need to do that.

So I guess this is adventure time, eh? And the adventure is... to be here now.

Hard enough. Easy enough, if one doesn't choose to make it "hard enough."

So then... here we go, right? Right?

We'll find out.

Just like...

What's "easy" keeps changing.

Then again, every day is different. That's, you know, life.

But things even as simple as "let's go to the oculist and pick up my new glasses" is suddenly not easy.  Something's up, or wrong, or I'm in pain, or ... well, something, but it's suddenly a bad idea to leave the house. Bed.

I take a great deal of joy simply sitting in the back garden and watching the plants and the birds and the honey bees and the squirrels and the cat and... you know, life. Except it's not a good idea to leave the bed, it seems. I get up, into the wheelchair, and ... nope. Couldn't even make it that far. Back to bed.

Much of this I blame on elimination problems. Alan the Bladder has his own ideas. Colon, for whom I haven't found a non-obscene name, has its own ideas. Everything has it's own ideas.

Yeah, I know, just like life and all.

I'm hoping to make it to the oculist's today. I'm going to snag a snack, another cup of pu-erh, and hope for the best with the morning's ... necessaries, shall we call them delicately.

Perhaps I'll even write some more music. Some got written yesterday, quite well too. But when you're writing music about boats in the ocean, for a big-ass band, it takes a lot of notes. A lot of notes.

So that's all the time I have at this moment. Off to... well, have what needs to happen happen without too much discomfort, and with enough success so that it can actually fit into the category of "happened."

Here in southern California, the fake-summer heat has receded, and it's back to definitely spring. I hope I can get out into it today and actually enjoy it. It is quite wonderful.

Just like, you know...

Life.