Yesterday in 106 degree heat I helped deliver a load of hay to a young family who just moved onto a farm in the area. Tomorrow I'll unload eight pallets of freight in a cooler, so there you go. Hot and cold, that's my life.
For the past two years I've done nothing but physical labor. I needed that. I was so stressed out from thirteen years in California that I needed to just put my head down, put it out of my mind, and work it out of my system. When I saw my ex brother-in-law this spring the first thing he said was, "Wow! You look healthy again -- all the stress is gone out of your face."
Two weeks ago, I was visiting old friends in Seattle, where I lived during the Eighties and Nineties. My mid-twenties to mid-forties. It was a good time to be young in Seattle. It was growing but it wasn't over-crowded yet (it is now). My first stop two weeks ago was at Green Lake, which was always the heart of Seattle for me. I always oriented myself to it, no matter what part of town I was living in. I must have run around that lake (2.8 miles) at least ten thousand times over twenty years, and loved each of those runs. To my astonishment, Green Lake is even more beautiful now than it was then. The trees and shrubbery have grown more lush and taller. They protected the bike path around the lake and left the internal asphalt path to runners and walkers. The wading pool is still full of little kids, there are still guys playing hoop on the courts outside the gymnasium, soccer games going on the field next to it. The boathouse is expanded and of much higher quality. Talk about a trip down memory lane. Walking around that lake is like going back in time for me.
One old friend lives one block north of the lake, bought his house for about 35 thousand back in 1976. I suppose it's worth a million now. We talked for several hours. He's a part of a spiritual group that I left, down in the Bay area. He's happy as a clam. The over-riding feeling that I had in discussing my experience was that of not being recognized for who I am. Seems to be a theme of life. For the most part, I've always accepted that as a matter of course, and in fact tried hard to keep who I really am hidden under the pretense of your usual social persona, but only because almost no one shares my obsessions in life. I've spent fifty years trying to delve as deeply as I can into the meaning and purpose of life, as I've found it. To some extent, I succeeded. But of course, to find that answers exist is one thing; it's entirely another to try and integrate those answers into your character or your life. In that respect, I feel I've mostly failed. But that's okay -- it's a beginning.
Spent a day and a night in the beleagured town (again, a subjective perception) of Bremerton, a couple of days on Camano Island, and two days in the woods up above Sedro Wooley, at the west end of the North Cascade Highway. I tried to drive that, got as far as Jack Kerouac's old stomping grounds at Marblemount, but a fire further on closed the road and I had to double back.
Since my return from that week-long excursion, I've decided to go back into education. Teaching is really the only meaningful occupation I've had in this life. I'm applying at the elementary school in my old hometown. I may or may not get the job. Wish me luck.
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