My 'inner Ratatoskr,' 

Or what may clinically be called Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (non-hyperactive type, ADHD for short).

Only it's not a disorder. It's what makes my life fun to me.

 

Many things hang-dangling at various stages, phases toward completion.

 

I was the first and am certainly is the most senior of the active instructors of Otho-Bionomy®. 

For what that may be worth.

 

 

My father was a shipbuilder.

He tried to pry me into the trade.

"College is a waste of time; learn a trade."

My father was a tradesman.

He never did see Ortho-Bionomy as a trade

and grudginling at first considered nursing as a trade

Eventually saw me as a fellow tradesman.

 

I did stints in the shipyard,

In Layout, Pipefitter, Joiner.

As a joiner, I made journeyman in the union hierarchy.

Because I am tall they paired me with another tall man 

and we installed overhead panels.

One of us would be the one to hold the panel up to the ceiling furring

While the other, with a Yankee driver, screwed it in place.

We were the fastest team, eschewing ladders and supports.

 

I still have the image of an old joinerman whose job was flooring.

He walked the world bent into a question mark.

What would my body look like now if I had worked through my life

with arms the daylong raised up heavenward?

 

Now, in spite of not working the flooring 

(Perhaps because I avoided working the flooring)

I am in the process of negotiating not to be a walking (?).

With a life of hyperactive slouching

A tendency has crossed my threshold,

A tendency pulling me from the upright.

 

A griping tendon in my inner thigh, 

An anterior pulling on my torso,

An ankle that won't reveal what it wants

(Or what it seems to want seems too absurd);

A thing I call 'dysvestibulation'

a sciency sounding word I made up to mean:

Disorientation when in the upright,

Uncertainty about where I am and which way is up,

Orthostatic Hypotension which means I almost pass out

when I stand up and most safely stand and walk

In a partial crouch, an embodiment of

me questioning my stability in the world,

The basic relationship of being,

Relationship to this place

and orienteering outward around a turning point.

 

One thing I dislike doing is taking charge of a conversation with boring recitations of my maladies. Old men sharing bowel and bladder stories.

Parts of aging are not beautiful. Why do you think Sidhartha's mom and dad kept old people from their Darling's sight?

But for purposes of transparency (which also see)

I am building a special corner I'm calling my COLLYWOBBLES. A special little chapter to chronicle the bodily maladies of aging.

 

I have found another turning point, 

A decision made in favor of ongoingness, 

actions to support and promote continuing on.

Maybe only a featherweight added counter to the doubt.

I make a choice. Poetry helped a lot. I cast my lot.

Not any other reason I can find to continue growing old,

And this maybe is true at any age.

 

My ambivalence at my own continuing on corresponded to feelings about the world at large, the human portion of it. There's always been this weighing in the balance.

Are the "Good Bones" enough?

 

It comes down to this: I am here and I did not will myself here.

So what am I doing about it?

Is the world going to wrack and ruin

or does it always seem to exist

hang-dangling on that verge of being and non-being?

That precipice on which (G)g)od(s) sit(s).

Are we living in Catstrophic Times as so many smart people are telling/yelling us?

 

 

Learn the Process rather than the Position.