We Give The Gods A Name
The desire to resume writing--emails/journal/blog posts & Must Do lists--has returned. It has been inspired by the above photo, a journal entry, seven years old. Rediscovered, it reconfirms the reality of my life for the past twenty-four years of living in a rural fishing community in the Philippines. The bittersweet irony is that for these last seven years, I continued to debate the obvious reality of Malouf's epiphany as my own: I will be seventy-seven this year--what foolishness have I been thinking these past seven years when my life was already overflowing with blessings?
I was thinking I was still young, that's what, because I still FELT young. I still felt capable of living one last chapter for fulfilling dreams I'd let languish. I 'd dreamed I could write a book. A workbook for creatively getting through crisis. Specifically, I still dreamed I could finish the 180 pages of a manuscript I'd begun in Hawaii, thirty-one years ago...if only I had time to myself.
I have been dogged in regular attempts to resume writing, stealing time from Saturday Art students and maintaining Pilar, but it is time to stop dreaming I am a free spirit with plenty of time for dreams to come true if I just click my heels three time (or was it five?). It is time to fully embrace being a meaningful member of this culture, this community, and instead focus gratefully on sharing precious moments of a good life in a foreign culture. A life that Malouf accurately confronts me with when he writes: "...here is the life you have tried to throw away..."
...and then there is this earlier post:
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