Nirvana?

I have reached a Nirvana point today with many facets of my life.

I have recently directed all my energy to my yards, front, and back.

The front is in perfect balance right now – everything in harmony – the little hills and valleys working together spatially; the fall colors, strawberries and one-eyed Susan’s,  and now sunflowers contrasting with the spring and summer wildflowers, bursting with my worm rich compost, which attract the local birds in the early am, and then again in the late pm.

With great physical relief, I finished the backyard, sunrise-fence flower boxes, and sat down to a celebration with local fauna.  As I sat there, on my back patio, a glass of white wine in hand, my handcrafted, aboveground sprinkler system kicking in, a butterfly first came to visit, then as things quieted down; the bees came to visit, followed by a dragonfly.  It was hours before the hummingbirds would visit, but the cat came to see why it was now quiet.  I could now visualize the cat’s future perch on the highest platform of my garden boxes, where the first rays of sunshine in winter mornings will wake it from contented sleep.

Nirvana also means searching, and I have been reading Jack Kerouac’s, “The Dharma Bums”, lately, for our Senior Center Book Club.  This has of course, colored my thoughts on gardens above.

Reading Kerouac has transformed me back to the argot of hard-boiled Mickey Spillane, whose “I, the Jury” (1947) represented that era of cocky, sometimes college-educated, mostly 20-something, young men who had survived a world war, and if they could handle Hitler, they could survive anything.  This writing style only lasted a few years, maybe 1946-49, but it was seminal to me, aged 8-12, and defined my machismo; that I was as a man, or wanted to be.

So, now I’ve recently cleared my responsibilities to Library, Radio, Grand Jury, and other local NGOs, where is my future focus?

I recently tried a "creative" writing class, because I hate to let grass grow under my feet but it was too commercial; many were manically striving to become “published”; not me, so I'm still looking.

When I was newly retired, I attended weekly memoir classes, and wrote scores of stories and vignettes about my life.  I went on for five years of taking courses with SRJC, Sonoma State, Gotham Writers, many classes in each of those venues, as well as private writing groups.

Having thought more about what I really need now, it's not inspiration, but rather just: (1) the rhythm of writing something every week, (2) having it peer-reviewed, and (3) keeping it focused on an end goal, rather than ramblings, which I have been doing lately, and while fun, and sometimes receiving good reviews, could be gathered together into a chapter called, "Midnight e-mails from the Death Café".