Organization Man

One of the things I have learned about the aging process is that while I would like to feel like I have been a static model of consistency during the last fifty plus years, the reality is that we react differently to things as we get older. I am not quite AARP ready but they are sending me applications so the twilight is fast approaching and will be here in a few winks.

My wife Leslie and I live in a very modest home built in 1970 by a retired navy electrician, Jasper Lalli. Our home maybe stretches to 1800 square feet if you count the room off the garage. It was built in an era before walk in closets became fashionable. It retains all of the seventies charm it never had, along with original bleached cabinetry, funky carpet and original cheap fixtures. Good heavens, we may live long enough that some of the furnishings become collectable! Lucky our acreage is beautiful and always flowering.

My wife and I both came of age in the summer of our rebelry and discontent. Neither of us ever felt really financially secure enough to spend a lot of money on a decaying house that should be by all rights torn down. So we trudge on. Our house is a hodge podge of hippie tribal, ethnic and modern. But the most descriptive adjective I can give it is clutter. We are both packrats and there is never anyplace to put anything. Out of a bit of shame, I guess, we do not entertain, preferring to celebrate our festive moments at our respective shops. Don't think either one of us could live in polite society any longer. After 29 years in Fallbrook for me and close to twenty for her, the idea of having noise and neighbors is rather appalling. Don't think you can pee in your yard in the city without meeting major opprobrium.

Since my surgery, I have entered a strange and foreign behavior pattern. I am trying to deal with the piles of clutter in my life. We had a carpenter build shelves in the back of the shop to get the boxes off the floor. I had a crew cleaning out the garage and tack shed yesterday. My new rule is "haven't touched it in five years, won't touch it in the next five." So it's gone. Just paid the hauler for taking away the first load.

I was listening to my inner psychiatrist this morning and he said "Hey Robert, you just had a painful experience with cancer again and you want to tidy things up a bit." Just in case, I expire on the throne like Elvis, and snooping people decide to go through my sock drawer. Time to get the affairs in order.

It's been rather hard living as a hippie anachronism, especially since my coming of age was the seventies and not the sixties. And with more and more water flowing under the bridge since our crowd's rejection of materialist society, it is hard to make the case that we are not merely white trash, but are instead listening to the profound tune of some distant drummer.

My friend Kerry has been a little bit worried about my emotional condition lately. "What the hell is this, catholic confessional on your blog?" This, that, people don't have to know - he tells me. Why are you exposing yourself? I think I have been laying it out there more this past year. Because of the blog forum or the illness, I don't have a clue. Where's that shrink?

Forgive those lifelong suicides

you who jumped into the water

fully clothed

to rescue the reflection

of the setting sun.

Robert Hunter