Coffee and Life
Sometimes the act of just sitting with the coffee gives me this desire to go on. To write on things that perhaps I left behind or that somehow passed me by. There’s never any rush here to do a thing. To find an answer. It’s like a bubble. A moment lazily floating on. The effervescence and mood given by some moment I spend feeling the goodness of the post croissant life.
What does come back and with some share of both acceptance and disappointment are the life choices my daughter in California made. No one pushed her. No one demanded she act or not act a certain way. I’ve felt for some time she was unduly influenced by her mom. My ex wife has an insidious yet almost submissive thing going. It’s gone for as long as I’ve known her. Through our two kids. Through time spent when I traveled and slept in a battered pick up truck. Doing the passion play at archeology. All the decades spent doing the less glamorous work in IT.
When I look back at some singular photo of her I still have and one with our kids at a birthday party at a Japanese steak house, it seems evident. Seems obvious. A school teacher told me once she spread malicious rumors about my abilities as a dad. They were all shocked because it was me doing the daily lifting with our kids. My wife was busy cheating on me and justifying it.
I knew I would go then. I had this dream since living and working in Asia I would go back and live there. So I did. Somehow this fueled this level of antipathy with her to the point of poisoning things. I could never figure it out since I am so far away. A continent and an international timeline away. How far distant does one person have to go to let some painful rhapsody be truly past.
I write this not as a sorrow or angst point but really as encouragement for others to find their way out of their particular hell on earth. Cambodia is not heaven. It’s not some utopia as some vloggers would maintain. It is a place to go to. It’s not an escape unless you need one. It’s a direction. A feeling. A place where life can mean as little or as much as you need. I needed less. Wanted to sever the tie with America that seemed damaging and disruptive. I just did the thing. Some would say I reaped rewards and maybe punishments. Or I made bad choices. No matter folks. They were mine to make.
on retirement's arc
There is an arc to this. A swing in life I still see. We spend lives doing things others see fit. We work dog years to want more than what little we are left with. I wonder how many divorces happen after so many years and how many single people decide enough. When does enough become enough?
Part of this journey this time blogging was to write these things. To find my path. To lose and gain and feel human about it all. Its meant opening doors that were unlocked but sometimes felt rusted shut. I never dreamt I would meet my wife here. It was like another facet of this life in Cambodia that another person told me they particularly wanted. Having another person now means not just another start. We are both too old for that. It means a day to day with no clocks and no sense of timing. In a land where life and people are just accepted. Something I think my ex wife could learn from.
then there’s now
And it’s magical and sometimes dramatic. Different as this Khmer culture could be. So I sit here writing and wondering. When will I finish this? But I know. There is no finish. It’s the many angles and directions of the mirror held up for me to see. It somehow lets me see the past in some strange trick of light. But I want the now. Tomorrow be damned. As my wife is fond of saying,
we have no tomorrow. Yesterday is gone. We have now.
And she knows. It’s that Buddhist thing in her. This sense of the now of things.
The other part of now is seeing really there is no then. No back to look at. A powerful lyric in a song about scheming about the past and dreaming about the future. Yeah, we seem particularly apt to go do that when we stand at some crossroads. It is always easier to take the paved and well lit roads. But what danger is there in that? What unknown will you face when you have faced down a life of work that leaves you wanting. Wanting fucking more. Different. I left one day in March years ago. Landed in Tokyo Japan first. Sought a Starbucks. No answers but I realized there I did not need them. Now after years and times and drama and wonder; here I am. My Facebook years are long gone. I left those 90 people behind or they left me. Trying to re-ignite that fails. I think we look back and we think those people are frozen just how they were. Nope. They all changed like we changed. One person emailed me after years of no contact. He was responding to some old message about being on Signal. He wanted a response. So I gave him one. I told him everything had changed since that time 5 years ago. I answered him and then I never heard back. I guess with some of the Facebook friends it is a 5 year half-life.
I was thinking over coffee before a walk today what it all meant. Then I realized. It means nothing. What happened then is chained to then. Just like the person that left his past in Australia; we all have some past we eagerly want away from. Life in those countries has seemed strange and other worldly after living in Cambodia for 4 years this time. Like everything there is shattered in the reflection of the mirror that dropped long ago.
so where next
Just what I learned folks. There is no next. There is no plan. No forecast. There was after coffee and I walked. I wrote. I felt. And then this came wandering along. I'll let this percolate perhaps finally over some beer today later. I feel I need that today. First though, I will write and think. Examine. Because like he said,
the unexamined life is not worth living.
And I'll take it. For a time before I was full of "shoulda" and "woulda" and "coulda". They don't amount to a fucking hill of coffee beans. It has been like my wife here says. It is Now.
I started this sometime this morning. Had no idea where it would go. Most of the time I have no idea where I'm going. What I do know is I have this place. Have some people. Have some moments to go have a beer. Enjoy what I have. Not miss what I don't have.
What do you do?