Blog

This will soon be my new puppy, Kiko. She is a Shiba Inu, an ancient Japanese breed from around 300 BC. My life is soon to change.

“Still round the corner there may wait, / a new road or a secret gate.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

I once knew a person who was described to me as a bundle of contradictions wrapped up in an enigma. I think we are all a bit of that. I know that I am guilty as charged. I have admitted to it wholeheartedly and accepted that moniker.

My writing is never a political treatise. First, I will never write a political manifesto. I will leave that up to Karl Marx and his progenitors: my sincere apologies to all. I hope to encourage thoughtful introspection, maybe cause a head nod or a chuckle or two, but not add more oxygen to the already burning fire of societal division that pervades today. In my younger days, I was deeply involved in politics but have soured on it in more recent years. When one relishes in another’s failure, that becomes a zero-sum game. The schadenfreude oozes from the politicians and talking heads. I have learned to appreciate Henry David Thoreau’s words from his essay Walking, in which he wrote, “In one half hour I can walk off to some portion of the earth’s surface where a man does not stand from one year’s end to another, and there, consequently, politics are not, for they are but as the cigar-smoke of a man.” I routinely follow Thoreau’s advice and find those untrodden places. So no politics.

Second, it isn’t a religious treatise.

I will leave that up to the theologians, evangelists, and zealots. You may glean bits of my theology from my words, no more no less. Please don’t think that statement is a bit hypocritical but read it for what it is, words and thoughts only, no preacher here. These words simply reflect on where I find my own spiritual connection, not where you might find yours. Religion has become somewhat like politics-you better believe my way or at best you’re a heretic and at worse you will burn in hell. Stephen Crane in (re: Short Badge of  Courage) in this short verse sums it up nicely in, Think as I think;

“Think as I think,” said a man,

“Or you are abominably wicked;

You are a toad.”

And after I had thought of it,

I said: I will then be a toad.”

So what is your purpose?

Every new beginning comes from some beginnings end – Seneca 

Me on the front right circa 1980…The beginnings end? Only I will know…

Camping with Mom and Dad and my Siblings; probably in the late 60s or early 70s. The author is on the left wearing the yellow jacket.

“God intended for you to be happy.” – Mom

Weltanschauung is a German word that describes one’s particular philosophy or view of life. Literally translated it means worldview (see Friedrich Nietzsche’s Weltanschauung (worldview). I have always felt that it best encapsulates my own search for meaning in my life within both a spiritual and secular context. This search has taken me down many paths, the occasional dead end, and down more than one rabbit hole. Yet, I am still a seeker and I suppose I always will be. One more page, one more experience, one more fork in the road, one more roll of the dice. Does the answer to the questions of life lie around the next bend? Why am I here? What is the meaning of my existence? What will I leave behind? My blog is intended to give you a peek into my sometimes messy world.

Before I go much further, let me share a little background and a couple more thoughts. My blog really got its start at 12:35 A.M. on June 16, 1959. A little spank on the butt by Doc Wissman and I opened my eyes to the world. In my Lockean view of the world I was born a tabula rasa, a blank slate. No preordained plan that God had of my life. I would and still create my own life.

Since then, it has been one hell of a journey. I often think about the twists and turns of fate along the way. What if I was not my parent’s son? What if I had taken a different job after college? What if I had not met this or that person? What if I hadn’t become a father? What if I had taken a different fork in the road? What if? What if? Life sometimes feels like a board game where you roll a dice and move your token down a path until suddenly you are sent in an entirely different direction. A chance meeting, a life crisis, a new friendship, the end of an old one, the loss of a job, each can propel you down a different and often unexpected path. For me, all the what ifs are an academic exercise at this point and I really don’t want any do overs.  

My search for meaning also reminds me of the Latin phrase Amor Fati, which means the love of one’s fate. Accepting that one should embrace life with its good, bad, and the ugly. Life will throw you a curve ball and then it might groove a fastball down the middle of the plate. Stay in the batter’s box and wait for the next pitch. You might strike out but then you might knock a homer.

All these things have helped me pursue my Weltanschauung. So my life’s path along with its fates and all the twists and turns continue to propel me towards my final world-view. Will it be a vain pursuit?

“Know thyself? If I knew myself, I’d run away.” Johann Wolgang von Goethe

Me at Acadia National Park near Jordan Pond – early 80s.

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“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

I come from a long line of common folk. My family simply lived life: they were good citizens, voted in elections, volunteered in the community, and raised their family—quite admirably. Gramps managed the local Farm Bureau feed store, worked for the County Assessor’s office, and appraised property. Dad owned a civil engineering firm and served on a number of city and state boards and commissions.

Mom ruled at home where we lived by her mantra, “A place for everything and everything in its place.”  Our house was orderly— you got stuff out, you put it up when you were done.  I recall more than once being ordered into the basement to clean up a mess properly, and you’d better not come back up the steps until the job was done.  There was no such thing as half-ass—any job worth doing had to be done right.  You made your bed in the morning and you put your neatly folded clothes into the dresser. The orderliness of the house was sacrosanct.

I began my work-life in 1975 at Dad’s company as the “Office Boy”. I filled the coke machine, put toilet paper and towels in all the restrooms, swept the front entryway, and made “Xerox” copies for the engineers. If I had downtime, I helped out in the printshop and built a lasting friendship with Horace, the printer.

It was working for Dad that I learned the meaning of hard work. I also learned that you could also have fun but you needed to get the job done and done right. I treated work as an opportunity to learn and that I alone had the ability to determine what meaning it had to me. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.” I am retired now but often miss the comradery and meaning of work. I am slowly coming to realize that retirement is not the meaning I have been looking for; but finding meaning feels like I’m chasing after a ghost.

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” – 17th Century Proverb

“Playing” at the Coors Brewery in Golden CO, circa 1983. The Author is sitting, right front.

“If A is success in life, then A=X+Y+Z. Work is X; Y is play; and Z is keeping your mouth shut.” – Albert Einstein 

I bought a house on Newton street just a few blocks from my old high school. My anxiety level about moving is off the charts.

Change, is it inevitable?

I did stuff that I don’t ever want my kids to do (or know about), which includes calling my parents from the police station to come pick me up after the infamous egg throwing incident when I was in high school. Let’s just say mistakes were made, my parents weren’t happy, and I played a part in ending the homecoming float competition at the high school. I remember buying up all the eggs at our local Kroger and loading them into my friend’s car and we weren’t going to an egg fry.

Miss Nay, my sixth grade teacher, had a sign on her desk that said, “Make sure your brain is engaged before putting your mouth into gear.” Methinks we could use a little more brains and a few less words these days. We were also taught that if you didn’t have something good to say then it was best left unsaid. You were judged by both words and deeds. Words without deeds were hot air, or as it was often called, bullshit. When your words and deeds came together you could astound many of those around you.

“The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.” – Mark Twain 

“Every book is an adventure of the mind and an invitation to experience the gifts of the imagination.” Hermann Hesse

Is that not true of life, too?

Mom’s ancestry was solidly German. I tell friends she was 1,000% German. Her grandparents all eventually emigrated from Prussian Germany in the late 1800s. I still have the wooden trunk that carried my maternal great-grandmother’s belongings to America. Swearing off their allegiance to Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last King of Prussia, they became American citizens. Then they settled into a life of farming in the southern part of the county in what was then the German community around Waymansville, Indiana. My Grampa grew up speaking German. I still have his confirmation Bible printed in high German from 1909 (I also have my Grandmother’s too).

My Great-Great-Grandmother, Eleanor, gave birth to Darius, my great-grandfather when she was eighteen. He was raised by his grandmother after Eleanor’s soon to be husband, the local schoolmaster, would have nothing to do with an illegitimate child Thus the DeLap name and the claim to a Scottish bloodline. My great grandfather ended up marrying Sarah Nolen from Carmi, Illinois. The Nolen’s were Irish, too. Ancestry and family history often weave a tangled web.

Mom and Dad’s ethnic mix created an interesting dynamic growing up.  Formality met frivolity. You learned how to navigate those two personalities. I’m the offspring of this Germanic-Irish heritage—I can be equal parts anal retentive and a good bar mate. I can be alone or in company. I am perfectly fine being alone but would welcome someone waking up with me in the morning. 

Age mellowed mom a bit, or maybe it was the four rapscallions who constantly tested her ability to hold the line.  Dad was more gregarious.  He was the guy you would sidle up next to at the bar, share a drink, and talk about life.  It was hard for me to believe that he was the grandson of a Southern Baptist preacher—although, every once in a while, the preacher in him came out.

“The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.” William Hazlitt 

My Emotional Road Map (or Sympathy for the Devil- Rolling Stones)

My Emotional Roadmap

My brain can be all over the map. It has been that way my entire life, Probably more so now as I weather my second divorce and face my 67th year. I try my damnedist to keep the devil at bay.

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about my emotional health and how much it controls my physical and mental wellbeing. So I decided to write down a list of emotions that are in and out of kilter right now. It was shocking and enlightening at the same time. But I thought of it as an emotional roadmap. A small piece with all the entrances and exits I have passed through on my life’s journey. Who knows where the road will end but I’m still on the freeway?

In some ways I think I have entered another dark period in my life but I’m not ready to quit driving and get off at that final exit. There has always been a road sign to remind me that my exit is 50 miles away and take Exit A or B. So fasten your seatbelt and come with me on my emotional road-trip. Following are things that have bounced around my ever active brain. Welcome to my road…

• Depression and anxiety. Top dead center. My constant companions. They have always been a part of my life.
• Social anxiety disorder. Being in crowds sends me into a panic.  
• I have started going back to church. A small congregation and I now sit in the back row. If I need to bail I can slip out quietly.
• Early mornings are very hard. I often wake up in a panic. What do I need to accomplish today? The bed feels cloying and I often wake up feeling anxious and depressed.
• Loneliness. I have a very strong desire for solitude, but…
• Familial relationships, especially with my children? Am I a good Dad?
• Love? Will I ever find it again? Is there someone who will love me for who I am rather than who they want me to be?
• Changing doctors. I need better care at my age.
• Motivation to do anything. I can easily sit and just stare out the window. 
• I feel trapped in this apartment but I’m afraid of moving.
• I want a place to call my own and now that I have it, I don’t want it.
• Move away from here? Abandon this life? Another state or Country?
• There are moments of the day that I feel optimistic but soon I become depressed. I think how free I feel with life then I become an emotional captive with my existence.
• I sometimes worry about my short-term memory. I often lose track of events that happened yesterday.
• My friends at Upland, Taku, and Zwanzigs. Comfort food and company. I ate sushi tonight.
• I am often misunderstood by my family. They often don’t understand me or is it vice versa? I am a complicated soul.
• Poetry, Poetry, Poetry. I love to read poetry. I get lost in the poet’s words. Seamus Heaney. WB Yeats, Oscar Wilde, William Blake, Samuel Beckett…
• The Dao De Jing and Chuang Zu 
• My musical tastes reveal my age. I love the Pogues and The Dubliners. My Irish roots.
• “Landslide” Fleetwood Mac. “Time makes you bolder, children get older, and I’m getting older too…”
• No one to look over my shoulder and tell me what to do…
• Warren Zevon. “My Shits Fucked Up”.
• There is a devil in all of us. How do we keep it to bay? Open ended question…

“When nobody wakes you up in the morning and you can do whatever you want. Is it freedom or loneliness?” – Charles Bukowski

The East Fork of the White begins at the confluence of the Driftwood (left) and the Flatrock (right) Rivers at Mill Race Park in Columbus, Indiana

“And the evil done in hopes that evil surrenders/ But the deeds of the devil are burned too deep in the embers/ And a world of hunger in vengeance will always remember.” – Phil Ochs

Tabula rasa – The mind in its hypothetical primary blank or empty state before receiving outside impressions; or something existing in its original pristine state. Source: Merriam-Webster.com

In Latin, it means, “scraped tablet”. Humans are born “blank” and our identity is defined entirely by events after our birth. This theory was expounded on in the seventeenth century by the English philosopher John Locke, who posited that, at birth, the (human) mind is a “blank slate” without rules for processing data; over time, data is added and rules for processing such data are formed solely by one’s sensory experiences (Source: Merriam-Webster.com).

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” – William Blake

Whose image do you see when you look in the mirror? Is it a stranger or an old friend? Whose reflection? Do you want to pack a leaving trunk? Is it who you are or who you long to be? Or, whom you long to return to? Does it smile back at you when you smile, or sneer at your hypocrisy? Does it frown with you or laugh at you? Does it laugh with you? Does it chide you for your arrogance and serve up a good slice of humble pie? Does it see the lines and blemishes on your face and make you realize you’re not young anymore?

Have you decided to throttle old age and declare war on decline? Will you welcome tomorrow as an old friend rather than a thief stealing away time? We do have the opportunity to choose who we want to be, even in our fading days.

“Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest. – Mark Twain 

“Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand…” Jeremiah 18:6

I have never had much musical talent. I never learned to play an instrument but still love listening to all types of music. When I was in high school, I was in the music appreciation club which involved bringing a favorite album to club meetings. We sure listened to a lot of Rock & Roll those days, and I still do. I have decided that if I had the talent to write songs and play them, one of my first songs would be The Elm Street Blues, Oh, I’ve got those Elm Street Blues again.

The Cape Cod on Elm Street was the first house I lived in. Just across the street lived Miss Hull, a retired school teacher. I would traipse over to her house quite frequently to have her read storybooks to me. Just next door lived the high school basketball player who stood better than six feet and would lift me up to the sky. Sure seemed like a long way down back then. 

Across the alley were our next door neighbors who had a Boston terrier named Speckles. The dog would grab hold of a tennis ball inside a sock and then they would twirl the dog around in circles. It would not let go until it was safely back on the ground.

Our neighbor just to the north raced stock cars at the 25th Street Fairgrounds. He named his racecar the “Purple Bomb”. I would lie awake on a summer evening and listen to the sound of those races and imagine I was in the Purple Bomb.

My brother had been seriously doubting the existence of Santa Claus, until that Christmas Eve on Elm Street in 1964, when things changed a bit. He heard on his radio that NORAD was tracking a UFO entering U.S. airspace from Canada that they believed to be Santa Claus. He ran downstairs into the front yard with his binoculars and gazed intently into the cold night sky to see Santa and his sleigh.  Mom and Dad said they got one more year of belief in Old St. Nick out of him, thanks to the NORAD Santa tracker. Not sure if he saw anything but stars, but the mind can play wonderful tricks on the soul. I have always felt that the feeling that emanates from the soul should trump the brain.

It was a short walk down the alley from Gramp’s house to our neighbor’s just across Elm Street, where I had a lawn mowing job. With the alley now paved, the lawn mower was an easy push. The few dollars I earned sure bought a lot of baseball cards at Northside Drugs. Three dollars a job as I recall. Two dollars if I cleaned the gutters. I always admired the geodes in Mrs. Garlock’s backyard but resisted the temptation to break them open to see what treasure lay inside. That would have resulted in the loss of my first job. But, I needed to keep mowing to keep the baseball cards coming and I still have all those cards.

We moved away from Elm Street in 1965 and I still miss it for what it was and for its bricks and mortar. I often drive by my Gramp’s bungalow on Cherry Street and the old Cape Cod on Elm Street. They still look the same to me, the memories are still fresh through all the intervening years. For me, Elm Street will always be a symbol of those wonderful days of youth when the world was an oyster to a boy full of mischief and hungry for adventure. Elm Street was the jumping off spot on the highway to my future.

We are all sculptors and painters and our material is our own flesh and bones.” – Henry David Thoreau

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” -Buddha

I’ve taken the following from my previous writing but I believe that they do bear some repeating. 

“Know thyself? If I knew myself, I’d run away.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To be a Citizen

I come from a long line of common folk. My family simply lived life: they were good citizens, voted in elections, volunteered in the community, and raised their family—quite admirably, I might add. Mom once served on a jury when we were kids and helped convict a purse snatcher; she did a lot of volunteering at our schools, too. Gramps managed the local Farm Bureau feed store, worked for the County Assessor’s office, and appraised property. Dad owned a civil engineering firm and served on a number of city and state boards and commissions.

Tabula Rasa

Tabula rasa – The mind in its hypothetical primary blank or empty state before receiving outside impressions; or something existing in its original pristine state. Source: Merriam-Webster.com

In Latin, it means, “scraped tablet”. Humans are born “blank” and our identity is defined entirely by events after our birth. This theory was expounded on in the seventeenth century by the English philosopher John Locke, who posited that, at birth, the (human) mind is a “blank slate” without rules for processing data; over time, data is added and rules for processing such data are formed solely by one’s sensory experiences (Source: Merriam-Webster.com).

On Being Born

I don’t remember having any thoughts that day I was born; I certainly do now after 66 years in this mind and body .  I do remember my baby crib when I was around two: I needed to be confined lest I wandered off to do serious damage to the house or myself. Mom once had my crib too close to an end table and I grabbed her favorite lamp, pulled it off, and broke it into pieces. I was reminded about that for years. I remember toddling on the floor in the house on Elm Street and diving headfirst through the glass storm door onto the carport floor (Dad didn’t tell me he had fixed that latch). I once took a knife and cut the twine seat in one of our chairs, believing I was the mouse helping free the lion from his ropes in the famous fable by Aesop. I got a paddling for that one. I climbed on house and garage roofs, went on reckless bike rides into the bushes, climbed onto the school rooftop (they conveniently placed a TV stanchion close to the building), and stabbed myself with my own pocketknife.

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The following quotes are from the Irish poet, Seamus Heaney (1913-2013) one of many of the Great Irish poets.

“How perilous is it to choose not to love the life we’re shown?”

“Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.”

“Insist on yourself, never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” – Muriel Rukeyser

Weltanschauung is a German word that describes one’s particular philosophy or view of life. Literally translated it means worldview. I have always felt that it best encapsulates my own search for meaning in my life within both a spiritual and secular context. This search has taken me down many paths, the occasional dead end, and down more than one rabbit hole. Yet, I am still a seeker and I suppose I always will be. One more page, one more experience, one more fork in the road, one more roll of the dice. Does the answer to the questions of life lie around the next bend? Why am I here? What is the meaning of my existence? What will I leave behind? That is why I seek…

“Writing is the Latin of our times. The modern language of the people is video and sound.” – Lawrence Lessig

“But great grand schemes will get you grief
Take what you need, that’s all.
A light craft takes the wind and skims the water lightly.”
– Yuan Mei from What I have Seen

“Life has no meaning a priori…it’s up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

I have never been too much into idols. I suppose if asked I would say my Parents and Grampa. No sports superstars, movie actors, and certainly no politicians. My idols have always been close to home.

My life is a long running film and there won’t be a sequel. At least not in this body.