THE ROAD NOT TAKEN (YET): THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED BY

SELF-PORTRAIT

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…” (Robert Frost 1915)

I am currently tramping in that yellow wood; and the wood I tramp next will be the white one, my last one.  Sigh.  Indeed, dear readers, at 69 years of age I am in the Autumn of my life, hoping Wintertime is a long time coming. Sigh again!

This blog entry I shall shout out a couple of questions, one temporal, the other existential: Where have I been?  and Where am I going?

Well in my salad Spring years I spent all my time trying to impress my peers, especially the female species.  I had the right hair (Brylcreem … a little dab’ll do ya); I had the right shirts (white t’s with my Black Cat smokes tucked in the sleeve); I had the right jeans (Lee boot cuts); I had the right footwear (Rocky cowboy work boots); I had a hot car (1964 Comet Caliente convertible); I had the right jobs (Saskatchewan Government Telephones pole climber, West Coast Transmission and Trans Mountain pipeline surveyor).

I had the looks, I had the money, I had the swagger.  I was an arrogant ass (sadly, those same attributes, by the way, prevail even today).

In my Summertime life I had to grow up.  At 22 I had a wife and daughter. (I still worked the pipelines.)  At 30 I had a son and at 33 another son.  And by this time I was a high school English teacher turned high school guidance counsellor.

My job was secure.  I was reasonably popular among both students and staff.  I even taught third and fourth year Psychology classes at the local university. But … I was now more insecure, for whatever reasons, than I had ever been before.

In my Autumn life I have professional contracts with the local school board, dealing only with young offenders.  After a twenty-two-year stint, I know longer teach at the university.  Instead, I have a private hypnotherapy practice with an office in downtown Regina.  My children have grown and I’d like to think that I, too, have grown.

This my skinny on my life to date. Where did the time go? has at least one gap still that needs minding: 

When the hippies arrived everything changed.  I went from greaser to flower child (I was actually called Flower Child, which seemed apt considering my surname).   My Brylcreem ducktail became a bandana and ponytail.  My white t’s were ditched for tie-dyes.  My boot cut Lee jeans were redressed to very wide bell bottoms with lots of patches.  Instead of cowboy boots I wore either hiking boots or “thongs” depending on the weather.  (Those 60’s thongs are now called flip-flops, thongs now refer to those fanny-floss swim suits, the beach attire for exhibitionist femme and homme fatales.)

I ditched my macho pipeline jobs and enrolled at university as a student of English Literature.  (On this particular action; especially, I’ve no regrets!) I looked Woodstock but I really wasn’t.  I was a drinker and a fighter, not a doper.  I looked the role but played the fool. 

 

Where am I going? This is a groovy and really heavy query, man!

At present I fancy myself as an existentialist longing to be a brutto tempo busker.  Transfiguring to existentialist seemed the necessary fit for my academic survival.  As an undergraduate student in English literature I embraced the Carpe Diem (pluck/seize/grasp the day) that was prevalent through the ages and pages in literature.  As a graduate student in Psychology I wrote lots of papers on Zen, Phenomenology, and Existentialism – of which, by the way, I am quite convinced are all synonyms of each other, including even, Carpe Diem.

Yes, I’ve traveled many a road to date.  The spring roads were fun, fun, fun, and the summer roads were work, work, work.  Looking down theses roads diverging in this yellow wood I anticipate mind loads of introspection and angst.  Choosing this next road is to examine plans for my remaining days. The unexamined (Autumn) life is not a life worth living (Socrates).

If I am looking for academic adventure I can continue marching down the road I am on, deciding to stay a therapist.  I can grow and improve my private practice for monetary purposes.  I can keep Regina as my home base and my high rise condo in downtown Regina as my office.  

If I am looking for adventure I must take the road less traveled by, knowing how way leads on to way, doubting if I should ever come back.  I can sell my office and cash in my assets and hit the road as a busker.

Not-so-strangely I know both roads, the current one being considerably more familiar than the one imagined. Not wanting to scumble the status quo, I must admit the current road does have that same ol’ same ol’ repetitious pattern, day after day, month after month, year after year. 

On the road wanting wear I have travelled it a bit.  I have hiked mountains in Europe and have strummed my guitar for hours on the streets of Amsterdam and Dublin.  I have hiked mountains in Africa and have sketched hundreds of people on the streets of Marrakesh.

The road less traveled is the alluring metaphor.  Imagining the road less traveled has more mystery, more charm, more freedom, and more adventure than the road more traveled. Taking that grassy road that is wanting wear takes gumption.  Passion dictates adventure. Pragmatism dictates boredom.

Tramping down either of these roads is not a zero-sum endgame, because neither road is a Rubicon crossing.

This is what I know:  

When you come to a fork in the road, take it! (Yogi Berra) 

This is what I really know: 

Packing sketchbooks and pencils is convenient -- 

Packing a guitar and harmonica is clunky!

Marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week are the two main characters from my favourite movie, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD.

STUNTMAN, CLIFF BOOTH (BRAD PITT)

BOUNTY HUNTER, RICK DALTON (LEONARDO DICAPRIO)

DRAWING DRUMPF: I’M THAT BORED!

Yes, I’m reduced now to drawing Drumpf – I’m that bored.  However, devoting 15 minutes to draw Drumpf does not necessarily mean I’m squandering my time.  At least when I post this portrait on this this blog, everybody knows the character.  Marked with his signature tan and cirrus pelt, Drumpf was an easy draw.

I must admit I do spend other minutes (“other” than these 15 drawing minutes) following Drumpf’s daily tornadoes of destruction.  I used to watch his antics on both CNN and FOX until I realized the CNN coverage of Drumpf, not-so-strangely, made me feel vindicated knowing that others hate him too; whereas when I watched FOX for the conservative spin, after a short time I acquired a sickness for sycophancy.  I mean, really, this is couch-and-snack time television.  Why should I spend any of my recreational time making myself to feel nauseated by the sound bytes of Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo, Devin Nunes, and Mitch McConnell, never mind Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro, and Laura Ingraham?

And it’s not the case that my days are filled with quality recreational time.  Factoid:  I still have to make a living.  Abiding by the municipal and common-sense guidelines for social distancing, at least in my Young Offender professional contracts, I have been working from home.  With my hypnotherapy clients, with whom I conduct sessions in my office, I am attempting to deliver sessions via Face Time.  These Face Time sessions are great because I’m forced to adapt, but whether they are valuable in a therapeutic sense, I’m not sure.  In a profitable sense they are a steal for my clients, yet offer no monetary value for me.  In a professional sense, what I am learning is invaluable, even though I am charging zeroth for the service.

In this world of designed recreational solitude my guitar skills are improving.  I’ve decided to focus my attention practising my guitar percussion skills.  I am tapping my guitar lots on both the pick-guard and waist. Here is what I know.  It takes practice, practice, practice to become an adequate percussionist on guitar.  (Hmmm, forgive my inductive reasoning here.  I should state that it takes practice, practice, practice for ME to become an adequate percussionist on MY guitar.  “It don’t come easy” adding booms and taps betwixt strums for this added Ringo Starr power.)

Besides some daily drawing and strumming I’m also embarking on Walden Pond walks.  Being quite used to a regimen of early morning runs before work, I am now getting quite addicted to my Thoreau high-noon strolls.

All this phatic chat above important.  This blurb that I am writing right now, atypically, is not about busking.  (My buskapades are on hold until general hobnobbing is determined to be healthy.)  Actually I thought this blog entry might metamorphose into an essay on loneliness but it’s not.  Rather, it is an essay on laziness.  It is about my laziness in my Lotus-land.  (I am forced to be home and am being paid for this restriction.  Under other circumstances, not having to go to work and yet receive a pay-cheque would be considered a Lotus-land opportunity.  I am very aware that most others, who are not so privileged as I, are struggling in this dystopian work domain.)     

Over these past couple weeks, I have become a slug.  Before this force majeure I would awake and rise between 5:00 and 5:30 a.m.  Now I roll out around 8:00 a.m.  Before this force majeure I would go on a half hour run around Wascana Lake.  Now I go for a stroll around noon.  Before this force majeure I was excited about going to work.  Now I get excited when I get up the gumption to change from jammies to jeans.  Before this force majeure I used to kick box every day for 30 minutes.  Now I’ve yet to throw even just one punch, which would take only a millisecond.  You get the picture?  I have become a slug.

Starting to climb over the hump of my slump I drew Drumpf.

Yikes.  I’ve been awakened by a disingenuous demagogue.   

Never did I imagine such a sardonic clown to be such a stimulating catharsis!

Marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week: 

RE-VISITING MY OUTLAW WAYS