1.23.12

 

                                           macrocarpa

i was sitting on the porch the other night speaking with jeurgen - the lovely bespectacled german man who owns a flower shop near cologne.  he's an elderly man, in a striped shirt and the hair he has left is grey.  in somewhat broken english he told me that he'd always wanted to travel but that marriage, career, kids, had prevented it.  the path he was on tied him down.  now, his kids grown, his second wife home to watch their flower shops, he has the opportunity to come to new zealand and he's taken it.  he's always been interested in the country, finally he can fulfill that dream of visiting.  he tells me it's good to travel when you're young and have no serious roots in a place.  i tell him it's never too late.  he asks me what my plans are.  i'm honest about having absolutely no idea.  it's good to enjoy that for a while, he tells me, but eventually you need to make some (ostensibly in preparation for old age), you cannot always live in the moment.  

which is funny to me since that's what i'm always striving to do... and often failing miserably at.

there is something under the surface of this vague goal of being totally present, some lump under the carpet, some shape behind the curtain and my guess is it's the simple, hopeful idea that by living correctly in the present you'll be carried towards the path you're meant for.  perhaps you can never truly plan - only react.  i'd like to think so..... since i've never been a planner.  (but at the same time i'm always planning - the perenially shifting planner.)

but what if jeurgen is right?

how do you ride both horses?  living in the moment but still planning for the future?  and isn't planning presupposing life itself is an inorganic, unfluctuating space for you to work in as opposed to a creative, organic force that may already have plans for you based on the overall, all-inclusive view of the universe that you yourself are incapable of attaining?

or is this just what i'm hoping to avoid making any plans or future commitments?

i'm banking on the fact that reality is an illusion, all of this a grand dream without an end or beginning and that nothing really matters anyway.

i love you.