ONE THOUSAND GHOSTS: ONE EXISTENTIALIST

 

KARSTEN

Praying on our planet right now are just over two billion Christians and just under two billion Muslims.  The just over two billion Christians believe in one God, and are worshippers of Jesus, the son of God; while, the just under two billion Muslims believe, too, in that same God as the Christians, but believe Jesus to be the messenger of God, rather than the son of God.

To both Christians and Muslims, God is omniscient, knowing all that is past and present and future.  Because God knows what is going to happen, then it follows that it must happen.  In a line, Christians and Muslims are fatalists.  They believe that everything is determined in advance and so, the very devout followers, know they are really unable to do anything about it. 

Neither a follower of Christianity nor Islam, I am so very able to determine my own destiny.  I can do this because I am an existentialist, a follower of Existentialism.

Unlike Christianity and Islam, Existentialism is not a religion.  Rather, it is a philosophical movement that suggests that the existence of life and the universe and of everything actually, has no meaning whatsoever, except for the meanings that we create for ourselves.

Christians believe in the bible; Muslims believe in the Quran; Existentialists believe in whatever literature they want.

Christians and Muslims are servants of God; Existentialists are servants of themselves.

Being an existentialist means I have no God, and therefore, no one entity always knowing where I’ve been or what I am going to do.

Being an Existentialist, I’ve decided to assign BUSKING as meaning for my life. Strumming on the corner with my 12^th string and harp, or with my didgeridoo and clave is my meaningful go-to, my default, when it comes to busking.

But the BUSKING that I’ve really come to enjoy most is my drawing the portraits of passer-by strangers who are willing to fork over ten or more dollars for their doppelganger selves.  (I’ve decided as of late to label these doppelgangers as graphite ghosts.)  Drawing on the street seems my true calling – my opportunity to meet and draw anyone from anywhere, my meaning for life.

Zen and the art of drawing doppelganger graphite ghosts!  It is simple.  It is mindful.  It is calm.

It wasn’t always simple.  Drawing someone’s likeness at lightning speed is a learned skill.  In my memory I have always been able to draw people.  But drawing people on the street for dollars has literally taken me the life of a thousand ghosts to practice.  And the next customer I draw is yet another ghost for practice.

It wasn’t always mindful.  Before, I was always a bit nervous.  Nowadays I still have a slight angst when drawing a new person, and that angst lingers until I can see that the likeness is there.  A thousand ghosts have taught me two important lessons about my craft: People do not know what they look like is lesson number one.  And my pencil never lies (at least not to me) is lesson number two.  I draw exactly who I see, and I see only ghosts, and they don’t even know they’re ghosts. 

It wasn’t always calm.  Whenever I am drawing someone in a public place, lots of people gather tend to gather around and behind me, watching me draw the face of the person posing in front of me.  This used to be quite disconcerting, but now it is comforting.  Drawing draws a crowd (pun intended) and the more bodies it draws means the more bodies I draw and that means more dollars in my pocket.  I love it when people jostle to get next in the queue.  CHA-CHING!

But surely the meaning in life for me is more than cha-ching.  

My meaning of life is not about the money.  My meaning for life is all about the adventure of drawing a new face in a new space.  And I’m always hoping to travel to a new space, a city or country I’ve never been before.

Factoid: Almost as much as I love busking I love hiking.  Hiking, too, is about adventure.  A hiking adventure for me means climbing a mountain, swimming a sea, or wandering a forest. To enjoy these adventures, in particular, are one needs to be mentally fit, physically fit, and fiscally fit.

Mental fitness has always been my theme.  I am always alert.  Not-so-strangely, I have to be mentally alert when I draw.  If I were not so, nobody would recognize their graphic ghosts never mind their doppelganger selves.

Physical fitness has been a priority of mine since my university days.  In my salad days of undergraduate studies, I swam a mile every morning in the university pool.  In my thirtysomething years I ran a minimum of five miles a day. And now in my 60’s I have become a fair weather runner, all-season hiker, and year long busking and Muay Thai guy. 

Fiscal fitness has always been a concern.  Did I mention that I have children? 

Anyone having the responsibility of children to nourish, whether it be to nourish their hunger or their thinking or their recreation, knows the money pot can never be empty.  For the most part, middle-class parents seem more than willing to sacrifice their personal time and their personal fun and personal finances to suffer accordingly for the benefits of their kids.     

I have (finally) arrived at a point in my life where I can, without too much guilt, focus my energy and time and budget on the sensations of new sights, new sounds, new tastes, new aromas, and all touches metaphor Midas.  Searching for meaning and joy in the worlds of busking and hiking shall now be my enterprise.  Being in the Autumn of my life, I’ve no years left to squander.

My dream of becoming a planetary busker shall become my reality.