The Rest of Your Life?

I picked up a stale copy of the Inlander yesterday ( www.Inlander.com ).

My expectations were low, grabbing a copy of The Inlander is more habitual than anything. I didn't even stop to thumb through the cover. It was purely a reflexive grab.

The end of a damp, cold day, I'd just spent the last fifteen minutes watching the final effects of a magenta Alpenglow dance over the higher portions of the Selkirk Crest. The snow crusted range holding guard over Newport and Oldtown, and the Pend Oreille River seemed reassuring. Now, I focused my attention on getting home.

I had a bit of a walk ahead of me, so pushing The Inlander deep inside the plastic bag from the convenience store, I began to trudge my way toward my roommate Lane's place. Fighting double vision while walking on ice, isn't something I've really mastered. The thought of doing some sort of triple axle loop, with a big whoosh in the Safeway Parking Lot crossed my mind. "Pride in your stride" matters in a small town where everyone knows everything, often before it's finished happening.

I'd picked up a Candy Bar, my reward for braving the cold, a lotto scratch ticket for Kevin-who can't win if he doesn't play, and reclaimed my sanity from cabin fever. The Alpenglow lighting the heavy snows on the mountains lifted my heart. I sang in my head, "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year", to keep time. I did not wipe any pavement with my butt. Life was good.

I really didn't need a booster shot of perspective from the Inlander. Still, I was about to get one just the same.

Arriving home, I rubbed my hands together to warm them, and grabbed Circus Dog. Laying down on my back, Circus on my chest, I reached for the Inlander. Holding it folded over my head at ever changing angles, and distances from my eyes, I slowly felt the chill leave my body.

These days to read things, I turn my head at odd angles or hold things over my head, turning them this way and that. Twisting words , light, and angle in order to get everything just right, I slowly read various Inlander articles detailing Iraq, politics in Spokane, and the state of the State of Washington.

Then my horoscope appeared.

As I began reading the future of my future, what an interesting, nifty read the old Inlander sure turned out to be.

They run an astrology column entitled "Free Will Astrology"
(http://www.freewillastrology.com/)

Its penned by Rob Brezsny. Lutheran's believe in Free Will, and Wise Men followed the star(s) to find the Christ child, so yeah, I rationalized reading it. They had me at "Free Will".

The buzz on Timbo courtesy of the stars, planets, and super nova black holes heading toward my county went like this:

"Aquarius. Goose bumps and burning sensations ( "burning sensations"? Oh God, please no. Not that..For he who travels through the valley of the swab of death following the cursed path to diagnosing the source of male "Burning Sensation" is not to be envied...) course through me as I meditated on your upcoming adventures. (Adventures? Gulp.) from what I can tell your rambles will be both spooky and fulfilling. They'll knock you on your ass and lift your spirits, sometimes at the same time. They'll give you almost more blessings than you can handle, even as they invite you to take on responsibilities that will give you the chance to be a hero.( Hero? Uh, that's so not likely.) Are you ready to have your certainties challenged in the most useful ways possible?"

In a word, No. I wondered, why do I read these things? Circus licked my hand, as if to confirm that I was indeed a pitiful dork.

I continued reading the Inlander. Committed to forgeting about the Horrorscope, I refocused my attention. Things were going along just swimmingly until I hit the last page.

I began reading an essay entitled "Leaving a Mark" written by Luke Baumgarten.

So far so good. No more thoughts of 'burning sensations". Baumgarten began his piece with the following introduction:

"Gayleen Isgrigg first pitched me this story three weeks ago. "The idea I had was: What if you woke up one morning and that was the rest of your life?" she said. Before I could think too deeply on it, her face screwed up into a grimace and little tears formed at the corner of each eye. She began to sob haltingly. Her daughter (my girlfriend) knelt at her side and rubbed her arm. Her husband reached his big hand out and placed it on her shoulder. The idea resonates because she's living that story. Every morning for the last three weeks, Gayleen Isgrigg has woken up--at Sacred Heart Medical Center, on 8 South, the hospital's Neurological wing--to the rest of her life..."

I kept reading. My biological grandfather, George Darroch, had died on that floor. I knew the place well. The article detailed Gayleen's long struggle with cancer, remission, then a final occurrence showing in her spinal fluid. Dementia. Hospitalization. Uncertainty.

I haven't read anything which has hit me this hard in a long time. Gayleen told Luke that there was a Pulitzer to be won in the telling of her story and that she'd let him take the credit for the story. As I continued to digest his masterful essay, I agreed. In a thousand words, Baumgarten via Gayleen, captured the meaning of life. What we leave behind. Our footprint so to speak. And as he closed out his essay, I found myself wiping away tears.

A lot of them.

"..."Every Day is so long here," she often says. Part of that is because she doesn't sleep much, because she's assaulted with batteries of tests and treatments, bombarded with the joy and conflict of family and because the cancer has made her memory a cloud of dreams, visions and memories, all of which exist in their own time and seem perfectly real. It's as exhausting for her as it is for those who love her. but she's tackling the chaos of this chapter of her life with the intent of understanding it and bringing back order to it. She, her family and friends, are united in that at least. And even if that task isn't achieved, it's makin what remains of her story--the woman who woke up one day to the rest of her life--a page turner."

How humbling. That time is short, always seems a no brainer, as long as its not your mortality, or someone that you love's mortality that your weighing. During various chapters in my life, the totality of the "rest of my life" has loomed with frequency.

Yet I also know that the desire to leave some trace that you were here, that your life mattered or served some purpose, escapes the notice of many people until late into their lives.

We live under the illusion that we have the rest of our lives to make up for whatever lost ground we've squandered. But what do you do when you wise up too late and it's already your last game of Blackjack? There's no more "hit me", no more interaction with the Great Dealer of the Universe. The cards remaining in your hand are all that you have left to play. Time is short. Someone is already waiting for your seat at the card table. All the chips you've earned have an undetermined value, and its all about to end. The dealer just showed 21.

"The rest of your life", if I can borrow from Gayleen and Baumgarten is a reality we all try to avoid living with each and every day. Most people are terrified to consider that the end of the story could occur at any minute. It is a very humbling thought.

That tenuous hold on life puts every priority into perspective. How much does your anger matter? How important is the gossip that crosses your lips? How much delight do you take in the failings and misfortunes of others? What have you done to make the world a better place?

If Today was the rest of your life what would you life have stood for?

Laying on the couch, petting circus dog, I wiped away a few more tears. Another quote came to mind. One equally humbling.

"Do all you can with what you have, in the time you have, in the place you are." Nkosi Johnson. A twelve-year-old Zulu boy, living with AIDS.

Wow.

As most regular readers know, last year I made big changes in my life. I sold my house. A place that some folks would say had become my identity was actually drowning me. Emotionally, spiritually, and financially.

My stuff went into storage or was sold. I rented a room in Newport and from October through March, I spent several months in the Arizona desert. Stepping back from all the people that had been in my life, revisiting my own journey, for the first time in a long time, I was still and stationary while in transit.

During that time I got to know Kevin. In between visits to Arizona, I also spent several weeks at the University of Washington Medical Center going through a battery of Neurological tests. Other neurological issues were finally diagnosed from the Closed Head Injury that I sustained in 2002. My fourth palsy nerve injury and vision challenges were a symptom of larger issues.

The trips to Arizona served as a pressure valve. Each day, Kevin and I had the opportunity to walk in Sabino Canyon. It was a magical experience to absorb the hourly changing light and its influence on the reflection of the setting sun on those canyon walls. During different times of the day, the color of each rock face seemed to change. Amazing forms emerged and disappeared. Depending on the perspective, the same view could look very different if you were open to just seeing the new interpretation of the deserts unique way with light. All of this seemed a metaphor for my life.

Things can look different under changing light and perspective.

More than ever as a result of my accident and vision deterioration, I am keenly aware that the morning of the "Rest of Your Life" can be just "one wrong turn on a red" away. Time is fleeting. There is much to do. Especially if you're still of a mind to leave a mark.

One result of selling my house was a new and very real commitment to establishing new boundaries in my life. I'd become sidetracked and distracted by too much dysfunction among some of my friends. During the year prior to the sale of my house, I'd experienced numerous "visitations" from friends who for a variety of reasons were stuck in their lives. Most of them were escalating alcoholics but some were also drug addicts. I tried to befriend men who were too afraid to come out, or who were chasing some sort of idealized masculinity that neither I nor the landscape around me could reinforce.

I'd always envisioned my home as a place where people could find refuge and healing, a place of rest and restoration. For many of the hundreds of people who stayed there over the ten years that I owned my house, High Mountain Ranch provided a different perspective and a place to dream.

But there were others who came with different motivations. Rather than taking stock of their lives, the nurturing environment seemed to feed their dysfunction rather than heal it.

One night, not too long before I sold my house, a friend dropped in on his way between Seattle and Montana.

He unloaded photo album after photo album from his truck, dumping it into my burn pit. Lighting the pictures, as the photos burned, he began to cuss and scream. Drinking heavily, he became angrier and angrier. Burning his past in some sort of strange ritual, I stood awkwardly in the light of the flames and listened. His rampage seemed directed toward every person who'd ever hurt him, who hadn't found him attractive, or whom had cheated on him.

Eventually his anger turned in my direction and I had to ask him to tone it down. The stillness of the night carried his cusswords all across the mountain but it did not seem to carry what haunted him away.

I realized that night that my home had become an emotional garbage dump. It was no longer a place of refuge but a place of refuse. During the course of my last summer in my home, I experienced this same scenario over and over again in different variations. Marriages ended in my living room. I came home to find friends drunk and passed out at the entrance to my gate, their vehicles still running.

Most of these folks weren't interested in improving their lives. They were only interested in getting someone else to take responsibility for the mess they'd created. The minute their behavior, attitudes, or addiction(s) were addressed, friendships turned and I sometimes found all that hostility directed right back at me. Some of what I encountered was incredibly ugly. How ironic that the very person taking refuge under your roof might retaliate, become bitter, or seek to inflict on someone who'd tried to help them an equal measure of whatever pain they might be feeling.

This was not the sum total of what I wanted my life to stand for. The dysfunction and senseless drama seems to flourish only if you tolerate it. Which brings me full circle to the horoscope, my vision for the Last Day of My Life, and leaving a mark.

I don't know how much time I have left on the planet. But I'd like it to be a "page turner" rather than a page burner. I don't really know what the final chapter is going to look like. But I do know that in reading through that essay, I felt humbled.

I've wasted so much time. Arrogantly thinking I could live other people's lives for them. I don't have the power to influence anyone's drinking. I can't fix or manage other people's inter-personal relationships. I am powerless over the substance abuse and/or addictions of others. I can't persuade anyone to realize how much damage is done when gossip and character assassination are the themes that dominate their relationships. But I can choose how much influence I allow these
people to have in my life.

Several years ago Native American singer Robbie Robertson recorded a most powerful song; "Making A Noise". In that song, Robertson speaks about Making A Noise and Not Going Quietly. I think his words offer tremendous insight into one recipe for The Morning of the Rest of Your Life.

And for taking on a horoscope that threatens to scare and bless you all in the same paragraph.