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

DAN PATRICK: THE TEXAS DOOFUS WHO IS WILLING TO DIE FOR THE DOW AND THE DRUMPF

TEXAS DOOFUS

I was going to write about my alterity as a busker, a real busker, because being a real busker brings lots of adventure.  I was going to write about my adventures busking abroad, and scribe a bit about some busking adventures that have unrolled in my home city, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

I was also going to note that alterity is not to be confused with alter ego.  Not that the difference in definition makes any difference to many (or any) of my readers, for it is sort of similar to the academic difference between self-concept (how you see yourself) and self-esteem (how you feel about yourself).  To psychology and philosophy and phenomenology die-hards (pun intended), the difference between alterity and alter ego is significant.  Alterity is the adoption of otherness, a different persona altogether; whereas, alter ego is adopting the nature of someone whose differences are unrecognizable. In the extreme, both conditions could certainly be dissociative identity disorders.

But I digress.  I was going to write about all of this or some of this but now I’m not.  My mind is too filled with the political doofus from Texas.

TUCKER AND THE DOOFUS ON THE EVER BLURRY FOX NEWS

Just the other day, 70-year-old TEXAS LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR, DAN PATRICK, told Tucker Carlson on FOX NEWS that “No one reached out to me and said ‘as a senior citizen are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?’ And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.”

His words were in reference to the medico suggestions that all Americans should be prepared to isolate themselves to prevent a Corona-virus pandemic.  Not in agreement with the medical guidelines, but rather in agreement with the sociopath Donald Trump gutlines, Dan also stated that there were lots of grandparents in the country who think this way, that there was certainly no need to sacrifice the American economy because seniors, especially, can take care of themselves.

In summary, 
Dan Patrick believes that the economic well-being of the United States of America is more important than the lives of older people!

Not surprisingly, this is the same Dan Patrick, who in 2017, pushed for the vomitous and shameless “BATHROOM BILL,” a measure that would have restricted transgender Texans from using public facilities.  Reassuring a faith in humanity and comforting to everyone, Dan’s BATHROOM BILL did not pass into law.

Most certainly, Dan Patrick could have been candidate for a Darwinian Award, an award designed to recognize individuals who have supposedly contributed to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool via death or self-designed sterilization.  I would certainly not object to Dan sacrificing himself by subjecting himself to Corona-virus injections and allowing several other experimental vaccines, too, to be injected into his wrinkled body, but alas it’s too late.  Darwinian Dan has six grandchildren, and therefore has already procreated to continue our species.  Hmmm … keeping my fingers crossed for his offspring.

There!  I’ve vented my REPUGNANCE of REPUBLICAN, DAN PATRICK.  (Is my message subliminal enough?)  My blog is entitled PSYCHOLOGY BUSKING A LA WORDSWORDS for a reason.  Better that I had a pen and not a sword in my hand, for had I a sword and not just a word sword, my warrior alterity might have smitten him.

Marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week is NOT that DRUMPF SYCOPHANT (DRUMPF is the original German surname for the Trump family), and NOT that DOOFUS who is willing to DIE for the DOW (the DOW is the economic index that tracks the New York Stock Exchange). 

Deservedly marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE are some sensible and compassionate people with whom I was fortunate to have shared some magical musical moments.

 

A SURPRISE VISITOR, JP, A FORMER BAND STUDENT (WHILE I WAS BUSKING)

BUSHWAKKER BREWPUB GIGMATES, CECIL AND CORI

BUSHWAKKER BREWPUB GIGMATES, CORI AND WILLIAM

BUSHWAKKER BREWPUB GIGMATES, ALBERT, TRENT, AND SELF