A Collection for Beginners

What are you doing here? That's a question I frequently ask myself, along with "Where are you going?" and "What's it all about?"

Growing up to about the age of 16, I remember hearing people say, "Question everything!" and "Question authority," and I would think those people were a little off their rocker but I would laugh at their insightful comments. Then, I was literally hit on the head and my whole world view changed.

What are you doing here? Well, you're here because I was in an automobile accident in 1979, placing me around my 17th birthday but I believe I was still 16 at the time. Up until that point, I was a good conformist who kept a neat room, managed his finances since he was 10, and accepted whatever he was told was the best truth applicable to the success of his life. Sure, I had deep thoughts that told me I was not like those around me but there was never any internal motivation to do anything about my thoughts. I honestly believed I had no choice.

A small concussion changed all that. I suppose many of us are the same in this regard. After all, industrial, highway, and home accident rates ensure that head injuries affect a significant portion of the human population, including the injured and their caretakers.

I know who I am. I am a person who has spent the last 30 years in a type of reparation mode, working around the rattled parts of my brain. In the process, I have learned more about human thinking than I thought possible. More importantly, I have seen and responded to the world in a completely new manner.

Keep in mind that I have always been a creative person, bucking authority with joy and happiness in my small way for as long as I can remember. The automobile smashup did not change my personality, only my world view.

Before I drove my forehead into the carseat in front of me as the car abruptly stopped while my body was still going 55-60 MPH, I accepted the fact that we owed a debt of gratitude to our nation-states. After I scarred my face (ever so slightly, perfectly in line with my left eyebrow), I found out that I am a full-fledged member of nothing. I am solely a human animal living on an obscure planet, looking for a way to put food in its mouth. I went from a sense of semi-belonging to a tight network of human beings to a wondrous sense of being quietly alone with myself, where I have lived ever since, but ready to change the world, if needed, so I can keep my quiet to myself.

Every morning I wake up and ask myself who will I pretend to be that day, which is a corollary to the questions I mentioned previously. I know I cannot change the fact that I am a bipedal hairy primate with a false sense of security and a brain full of nonsense. Other than that, I have a wide range of choices. Loving husband. Happy teacher. Sluggish jogger. Wondering wanderer. Wandering wonderer. Other choices I've tried but cannot maintain for long, such as Angry Guy and Marathon Runner.

Across the street from me lives a nice couple whose children have grown up and left the house. The man has a job that allows him to work from home. His wife apparently likes to have shrubbery planted under the shade of trees. Thus, the husband spends a few days a year planting and replanting small bushes. I take off my social glasses and look at him from the perspective of an uninformed observer. The bipedal primate across the street seems to attack the ground, pushing in and pulling out plants for no reason of survival that I can see. He doesn't eat the plants. In fact, he seems to spend excessive amounts of energy attacking tree limbs above the plants and doesn't do anything useful with the limbs that he removes. He piles the dead bushes and excised limbs on the edge of a raised passageway between our two domiciles.

The previous paragraph describes how I most often see the world. Usually, I can make no sense of what I see. I spend my time gathering clues about the world views of those around me to understand their motivations so that I can help them achieve their goals while in my thoughts I am just as happy to do nothing as long as I get fed, clothed and have a decent shelter in which to spend the night. For the most part, happiness to me is being alone with my thoughts.

Before I began this blog entry, I opened a drawer of my desk that I haven't used in years. Inside it are a few dozen U.S. pennies that I collected. I have a plastic bag with coins from countries around the world, including Mexico, Argentina, Italy, China and the UK, that someone brought me from their world travels. I have a set of decorative seals of the U.S. Presidents. I also have a United Nations Postal Administration Stamp Set "A", a collection for beginners, with a note that states, "United Nations stamps are the first stamps in history to be issued by an international organization." I also have stamp sets from Hungary and Panama. I have an embossed gold seal of the State of Tennessee. I have a corroded 9V battery which is corroding some pennies. There are a couple of locks, one with a key and one with a combination dial. I have some keys that go to locks I no longer have. I put those items in my desk drawer in the early 1970s and have removed them only a few times since then, including today. They are part of who I am (of course, you know I am no longer who I was because the past does not exist, only this moment - a memory is a thought, not an actual past moment we can recreate; the items in my desk drawer are real, available to all moments of my life as long as they're there, but not part of the past, only part of a new moment which includes my thoughts I think are the past).

What are you doing here? I don't know.

Those of you who've emailed me have told me your reasons for reading this blog. I understand that some of you desire to see me write about you in this blog, or see something that indicates I have recognized your influence upon me in a particular moment. I do what I can not to write blog entries just for the individual entertainment of some of you (with a few requested exceptions) to keep my writing on a path I have chosen.

I have my life to live. You have yours. We all have our personal space that we maintain, whose depth is determined culturally. If you want to step into my personal space and influence me directly, we can do so outside of this word set. Words do not make us us. Words make you you.

You can be you without me. I may or may not write about you in a moment that has not existed. I may have written about you and you didn't know it. If you allow the moments to be, to flow freely through this world without anticipation, you will find wonders that words cannot provide.

I would rather lose you as a reader because you discovered the simple wonders of the world more fascinating than electronic words, or because I lost some sort of mysteriousness that attracts a small group of the readers here, if that's what it takes to get people to see beyond the restrictions of a nation-state or united nations (i.e., artificial human social inventions). I hope you don't need a bump on the head to see it. But hey, maybe you could've bumped your head and had a V8, instead*.

[*Uggh. A humourous nod to crass commercialism; where do these things come from?!]

In the comprehension of what my life is all about, I am just a beginner, an amateur, not even a dilettante. I can only see the wonders of the universe. I do not know what to do with them. I have 15,008 days left. Maybe, just maybe, I'll figure it all out before the end, one moment at a time, of course. You can stay along for the meander on this unmarked path, if you want. But as the popular saying goes, walk beside me - don't follow me and don't expect me to follow you. I care more about your freedom than you think.

In fact, I'm going to go stare at the sky for a while and enjoy the quiet passage of clouds over my head as a line of storms approaches. Give it a try. You might discover that you don't want to see me later. After all, I do know something - the joy of you is what your life is all about. Don't miss this moment to enjoy you!