It is 6:30 AM on Sunday morning, January 15th 2023. It occurred to me just a few moments ago that sitting next to the gas fireplace in my bedroom would be a great place to write. A heavy shower has just passed through and hopefully there will be a few more before the expected pause in rain bands this morning. The ambiance is perfect except for the sound of occasional cars and busses passing by. This master bedroom is always the noisiest being situated close to the street and on the second floor. You hear the storms, the wind and the cars whereas the rooms below are more quiet.
I awoke from an interesting dream where I was speaking about colonization to a filipino. I wrote about the colonization of the Philippines by the Spanish in my post yesterday so that would explain why. I didn’t know he was filipino at first and then checked myself because filipinos are extremely Catholic and I was approaching the subject from a historical perspective and not a spiritual one. It occurred to me in the dream that he might take offense since most people are unfamiliar with history and just believe what they do because that is the religion of their parents. There was a white American next to me who understood I might be causing offense and asked me how many beers I had. I only had one and so he said I might have attention deficit disorder which doesn’t make much sense.
I woke up and as is my habit I caught the last remnants of that dream and tried walking it back but couldn’t get past that last conversation. I then listened to the rain on the roof which soon turned into a deluge overwhelming my gutters and splashing hard on the ground. I’ll have to check the gutters out this morning to see if there is any blockage from leaves so even in heavy rain I won’t hear it spill over. I’ll also need to check the roof tiles for damage as there has been extremely heavy wind during these storms.
Normally when I wake up I first reach for my phone but realized that listening to the rain was much more pleasant. I realized that perhaps I should perhaps stop reaching for my phone in the morning and just appreciate the silence. Isn’t that what I did before cell phones? Our society has become too addicted to all that distraction our phones provide. Getting in tune with my mind I am starting to understand that the phone no longer provides joy but quite the opposite. I’ll usually look at the news which is never good and I’m very tired of the nonsense from the Republican party that is splashed across the top articles everyday. The Republicans in Mississippi have just made a law requiring female lawmakers to cover their arms; Republicans restrict voting which will affect the poor and minorities; Trump would have won the election if he didn’t grift all his donations (I thought the argument that he did win but it was fraud)?
No, listening to the rain or just appreciating the morning silence is much better for my soul. It is also time I get back to writing in the morning and/or doing my meditations. Limiting how many times I look at my cell phone is also a very good idea. I find when I do these things my mood improves and I’m more at peace.
My age of forty five has also been on my mind a lot recently. I actually forgot how old I was the other day and had to use an age calculator to figure it out. How can it be that I’m forty five already? Everywhere I look there is a stark reminder, the most recent ones have come from the movies and news where actors in movies I like have passed away. Just yesterday I learned that Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis passed away. We just watched “The Naked Gun” and her mother had a starring role. I was shocked to learn that Pricilla Presley is seventy years old! This is the beautiful woman who Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielson) commented “nice beaver” to which she replied, “Thank you, I just had it stuffed,” while taking down a stuffed beaver from the top shelf. Pricilla being seventy is one thing but Leslie has passed away and we all know what happened to O.J. Simpson who was also in the movie.
Realizing that a lot of actors of movies I really enjoyed in the 90s are now gone make me remember a trip to the rest home during Christmas to speak with the residents about six years ago. I remember a few of them had gathered in the lobby to do trivia and it was on actors that appeared in movies in the fifties who had all passed away. I remember thinking that they were all very old as I didn’t know the actors they were referring to. Well, here I am where actors I do know are passing away. Time goes quickly indeed.
I was also called “middle aged” by my friend and colleague when I let him know about my new hobby metal detecting. I had purchased a cheap one a few years back but quickly realized it didn’t work well on the beach due to the reactivity of salt water and black sand. I got false signals everywhere and so wasn’t much fun. So, I asked the metal detecting forums on Reddit about detectors good for the beach and with black sand and they recommended the Equinox which I bought and has been fantastic. For the past couple of days I’ve been enjoying digging up coins which must have been there for decades as their faces have mostly been worn away. I’m finding stuff that has been deeply buried as the storms have washed away tons of sand. Unfortunately I’m not finding any jewelry because Linda Mar is a cold beach suitable for surfers but not semi naked sun bathers lathered in sunscreen. I do find a lot of trash and tent stakes. The other day I pulled out a vaping pen, fishing weights, iron and concrete from docks, and a dog tag which I’m assuming were part of crematory ashes spread in the ocean. If I cannot find jewelry then hopefully I’ll one day find a Spanish doubloon if coins are going to be the main find.
At forty five I can no longer consider myself young. Throughout my thirties I always considered myself still part of the young crowd but that doesn’t work anymore at forty five. The mental trick I’m using now to not become too depressed about it is that I’m very glad to have lived through the ’80s and ’90s. Current times are quite depressing due to COVID, war, political fighting and the sadness caused by social media. Even the young seem to be nostalgic for the magic of the ’80s and ’90s before technology when times just seemed better. I actually had a young man tell me that on the internet in a crypto currency group I’m in. He said “I wish I could have lived in the ’90s when times where better, not like they are now.”
Those decades are also referenced more and more in popular shows, movies and games such as Stranger Things or Fortnite. An entire generation was just introduced to Metallica through their use of “Master of Puppets” in Stranger Things for example.
I’m glad I lived through the ’80s and ’90s and hopefully we’ll be able to have fun times like those again. Society and the world are changing at a tremendous pace and this has caused a lot of problems.
Anyway, the time is now 7:12 and I’d like to get a meditation in before the household wakes up. Afterwards, I’ll drink coffee (for the first time in a long while) read the Dispatch and attempt the difficult Sunday jumble, check the roof and gutters and then do some metal detecting on the beach before the next storm band rolls through.
