This is the love of my life since we were married two months after meeting in Garrett, where she taught English while I had but one college semester, no driver’s license, and was four years away from sobriety and yet many years more distant from a reasonably stable career. Things eventually worked out and we retired early, but after a year at home Kathy elected to volunteer and ultimately to work regularly at Rise [which partners with the community to prepare, empower, and support individuals with challenges] for another five+ years. Late this afternoon she is finally retired again.

I really can’t express how much I admire her heart, soul, and spirit, often reflected in her Facebook icons: a peace sign in summer, a white dove in winter, but most often in her daily interactions and words. Surely a Child of God.

She will probably rather I did not post this, such is her humility, but this milestone is hugely important to me, and I’m sure many others will feel the same.

So here is to you Kathy Maureen Rowe,

May your retirement continue to bless others

 Even as you change directions.

And know that you are loved.

Time in a Bottle

New Year Day, 2017

To every thing there is a season and a time. My time is now... finally.

So many false starts along the way. Since retiring in April 2010 I have intended to turn my back to the computer, but always had so much to say... Or so I thought, but that was just my hubris. Or was it my circumstance? Perhaps I did have something to say, just not the right audience? No matter. Finally it is what it is. And that finale... or at least that quest, is what I yet crave...

And so that journey begins yet anew this very day:

I vow here and now

To shun nearly all Cyber-social interaction

 For at least one full year

And that no one 'out there'

Will read any of these words 

For at least 365 days

If ever

So this journal is indeed a time capsule, much like the proverbial message in a bottle... or time warp. And if you have finally discovered these words, perhaps you will discover some other random messages that will follow from the distance of a year or more gone by. 

January 2, 2017

So what is this tantalizing journey I crave to embrace despite failure upon failure for nearly seven years? It is to be more grounded in the immediacy of experience, perhaps best expressed (for me) in a poem written in 1804 and in a song sung in 1968:

Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

(by William Wordsworth, 1804)

Journey to the Center of the Mind

(by the Ambroy Dukes, 1968)

These works have resonated profoundly for me since encountering each, first as a high school adolescent listening to 1960's radio, and later in a college literature class. As time passed, related themes became more fully developed and integrated for me through various influences and sources, culminating in a serious, multi-year practice in Buddhism. 

But enough of that.

JUST KNOW that Cyber-absorption fragments human experience, and can be a sterile prison where languishing souls yearn for escape … But we are unaware, our primal Consciousness stunted as we shun Nature’s Sun for the monitor’s weak, artificial light.

The rest of this narrative will focus on re-capturing the immediacy and vibrancy of primary experience as we eschew the Cyber-cloaks, veils, and petty distractions that shade our being.

January 5, 2017

So you've found this 2017 January 5 time capsule? Did you find the 2017 January 1 and January 2 bottles as well?

TODAY I just want you to know I won’t have written every day. Maybe no more than once a month sometimes! You see, I am FREE of the Cyber-ghost! Free of the Cyberclops!!

What does that mean? That I no longer feel that Cyber-tug:

CHECK IT!  SEND IT!   LIKE IT!  POST IT!  CHECK IT!

And how will you know whether I have succeeded or failed long-term? Because I promise not to release ANY of these blurbs until I have walked the talk for the entire 2017 calendar year. So anything I might tell you per these time capsules will be validated by a solid year of earnest exploration throughout which I can honestly say “Despite my many pre-2017 failures, I have finally climbed that vantage which I have sought for years, and I know whereof I speak, at least from my own idiosyncratic perspective.

And if I can’t honestly say the above, I will not bother to send ANY of these time capsules out into the Cyber-void, and you will never know that I even tried.

January 9, 2017

Started this rather warm winter morning with coffee outside in a lawn chair - so different from most of the 2,500+ days throughout the past seven years when I would check the computer first thing, not to mention touching that base even more times throughout the day. 

And this morning was WONDERFUL!

Started slow, but within minutes I was witness to scores of sensory impressions: birds calling on branches and on the wing, fallen leaves quivering on the ground in the mild breeze, dazzling shades of jeweled green midst and sparkling dew, my own breath’s fog, soaring joy, and many, many other impressions that cannot be named.

Language is far too course to adequately describe the breadth, depth, and span of our illuminated experience. As Friedrich Nietzsche said, “That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts.”

May my day NEVER again begin on a computer!

January 10, 2017

So what is the point of narrating these thoughts and experiences? 

Honestly, I don't know. Maybe it's to remind me of my commitment and to bolster my new resolve? Or to leave a trail so that I can gauge my progress? Or merely a vestigial remnant of my past life that will slough off in time? 

Or maybe I imagine these time capsules might influence someone or some few others out there thinking to slay the Cyberclops?

Maybe you?

January 11, 2017

 Well this journey goes on but I have no more ink, this is the last drop