Ten Years Here and There

(The Language of Life)


Let’s go backwards with this—my time thing; since it is my time we are talking about, for the record, I’m sixty-two years old, perhaps with a life expediency of seventy to eighty-three (or eight to twenty-one years); and that’s a big perhaps too, considering walking across the street and getting run over, or a robber killing you, or a plane crashing, or a car accident, or some medical illness like a heart attack, or cancer, or a stroke. So my point is this, time is like a stepladder (it’s not a commodity), you have only so many steps to your ladder, and that is that. So if I go backwards, I’ve spent ten-years perfecting my writing skills, style (although I’ve written poetry since my twelve-year of life, onward, and my writings spans three decades to my first published book in 1981, plus five universities), overlapping these ten-years I had a business, and made a lot of money, and had a career, as a counselor for the Federal Prison System (BOP), but in addition, had two heart attacks and a stroke I survived, plus MS I live with (this is fifteen to twenty years out of my sixty-two years thus far.)

(In-between all of the above, in the last ten years (1999 to 2009) I’ve seen the depths of the Amazon Jungle, in Peru (and the central Jungle of Satipo in Peru, took a shower under the waterfalls); climbed the highest canopy in the world in the Jungle there, 119-feet; took a submarine 129-feet below the ocean in Maui; landed on the Mendenhal Glacier—four miles out landing on it with a helicopter, the spot being 400-feet thick, in Alaska (and went to the far north, to Barrow in the Arctic; and in Venezuela, flew a DC 10, over the Amazon Basin; went to the highest city in the world over 15,000-feet above sea level, Cerro de Pasco, went into the jungles of Java, into the volcanoes of Equator, and to the center of the world where centrifugal force is nil, balancing an egg on the tip of a nail. Watched the ships come in through the Panama Canal, the greatest engineering achievement man has ever accomplished. And five years before that 1994 to 1999, I had went inside the pyramids in Mexico; and went to Egypt inside the Great Pyramids there likewise. Again I went inside the volcanoes of Easter Island, walked along the sands of the Suez Cannel. Climbed the Rock of Gibraltar, to its very top, where stands its cannon, and walked through the Kasbahs of Tangier; walked a small length of the Great Wall of China, outside of Beijing. Learned how to play the piano (knew how the play the guitar since the age of twelve). I climbed the steps to the Acropolis, in Athens, and the steps to the Taj Ma Hal, in India, and the steps to Anker Wat, in Cambodia. Also going to the last 20th Century’s World’s fair’s, in Lisbon, in 1998.)

Prior to this I spent ten-years in biblical studies, writing a few books in-between, and overlapping this, going through two marriages, no three plus the one I’m on now. Now we are up to twenty-five to thirty-years. Near half my life time, the end part, we are now getting into the middle.
I spent eleven-years in the Army—1969 to 1980, crisscrossing Europe, and in a war (1971, the Vietnam War, and came out a decorated Soldier), and traveling from one side of the earth to the other, over lapping these ten-years—which makes it 35 to 40-years now. At this point we jump into my twenties. I crisscrossed the United States, living in, Seattle, Omaha, San Francisco (while in San Francisco, I leaned Karate from one of the Greatest Karate men in the world), the Dakotas, and throughout Minnesota, and so forth.
Well, we are now at—or in-between the ages of five and nineteen, I went to school to learn the basics like everyone (winning second place in Art for the City of St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1965), and did my drinking and smoking cigarettes, and going to church and working a dozen jobs, trying to get to be a grown up. And I don’t remember the first five years of life all that much (but much of it was spent on a boarding-farm; my mother being a meatpacker, and my brother and me, along with my mother lived in an extended family with my grandfather and aunts between my seventh birthday and seventeenth). In the process of these years I’ve had a few dear friends, and a mother and a brother, my father left before I was born, so we live through hardships and tragedies, and hope for the best, and thank God for the moment, and don’t cry about spilt milk.

So we are at the last ten-years or twenty of my life, perhaps even less, so if this was you instead of me, what do you have to do, what ever that is, you better do it now. So if God gives you or me the ultimate, let’s say 83-years, I got 21-years left, if he gives us ten, then we got one big thing left to do, at 21-years perhaps we can get away with doing two big things, but remember you’re not young anymore so you are limited; that is why the bible specifies: there is a season for everything under the sun. But that is it. Point of fact, if you’ve made it to my age, you don’t have much time left. If you are in your twenties or forties, perhaps you got time to see the world—but you better get going, I’ve seen sixty-countries, wrote forty-two books, known a lot of my friends who have died. Against what I’m saying is a theory, you can’t bury yourself under layers of crap, to where years and years and years go by, and you end up with five years left—and you need thirty-years more of living to catch up on those years you never did live, and what can you do in five years? Of course there are many things you can do, but not many things you can start from scratch and end up being a success at. You must learn the language of life. Before there is no life left to learn about.
The question may arise is —“Why do we (or I) postpone?” Perchance, and just conceivable it could be—you are already dead; let me put it less strenuously: when we make up lies, it is with pieces of the truth—but only enough truth to let the lie overwhelm us. If you are wondering why you postpone it is a thing you must figure out for yourself.

(If you are not satisfied with your life, you may want to take an inventory and adjust it…the sooner the better!)

No: 513 (11-9 & 10-2009)