Strange old world, strange new life
A cold front arrived in Central Texas today. The temperatures dropped down to 95 degrees. Brrrrrrr. Time to get out the coats and gloves, turn up the heater. But tomorrow, we’ll be back into the triple digits. The summer solstice is just days away …
It’s June, Month Five of my New Life, by which I mean post-retirement life, i.e. Life After Day Job. Life Everlasting.
I’ve got an illustration job, a big one that’s kept my nose to the grindstone for over a month now, kept me busy ever since we got back from our trip to Port Aransas. Yes, it’s kept me mighty busy. I've had time for little else.
But I’m not complaining. It pays the bills and it’s something I enjoy: art. Yes, it's frustrating some days, bent over the drawing board for hours, trying to get an image to work. But when the image finally works, the satisfaction is total—and, anyway, nothing could be as frustrating as working forty hours a week in an office doing something I don’t enjoy. I did that for years, decades, and never want to go back to that life, never want to work a "regular" job again. Therefore, my prayer every day is that I can make this self-employment thing work.
Europe seems like a distant dream now. Hard to believe it was only two-and-a-half months ago … memories come back, in no particular order … standing outside the Hampstead tube station in the twilight waiting for Carol and Bruce … strange dark buildings … Royal Opera House, trying to stay awake during Carmen, and not succeeding … slept with my eyes open, the movements on the stage and music combining with my dreams … my daughter and I walking through Kensington Gardens, the wind roaring in the trees … train to Rotterdam … Marcel and I walking back to his place from a pub late at night, waiting for a barge to pass under the drawbridge … Utrecht … dinner with Albo and his family … later, stoned and lost in mysterious old Amsterdam, paranoid … funny now but not funny at the time … all so far away …
I think I miss London most of all, the time with my daughter … the snow on Tower Bridge … our flat in Chelsea, sinking into my bed at night, worn-out and satisfied, thinking "this is London, wow" … the OXO Tower, martinis and the view of St. Paul’s and all of London spread out under the twilight sky … all so far away … like a distant dream from this present vantage point, sitting here in hot old Texas after a day at the drawing board …
And a few weeks later Diane and I would be in Port Aransas … that was a good time too … sitting on the balcony of our condo in the evenings, looking at the moonlit breakers … the Gulf of Mexico’s eternal tide … wind sweeping the dunes … and early in the morning the sun orange over the water … shucking oysters …
Strange old world … strange new life …
Some time after my return from Europe and before Port Aransas, I went to Dallas to visit family, and while there saw my father’s grave in the National Cemetery. First time I had been to the cemetery since he died a year before, first time to see his marker, his name engraved in cold stone with the dates of his birth and death, the bookends of his time on Earth … life without him is now one year old …
And life without my day job, the one I worked for 25 years, is now five months old, almost half a year … wow … there was a time I thought I’d never leave that place, thought that job would always be my life, no escape ever … awful little dark cramped office they stuck me in that last year … ugh … the horror … but now, it seems no distant like it never happened … much more distant than Europe … a strange and distant dream, that job, and thank God … but the strangest thing of all is who I used to be when I worked there … that’s how much the past five months have changed me, already …
Strange old world … strange new life … distant dreams … idle thoughts … summer solstice coming soon, and then what …
It’s June, Month Five of my New Life, by which I mean post-retirement life, i.e. Life After Day Job. Life Everlasting.
I’ve got an illustration job, a big one that’s kept my nose to the grindstone for over a month now, kept me busy ever since we got back from our trip to Port Aransas. Yes, it’s kept me mighty busy. I've had time for little else.
But I’m not complaining. It pays the bills and it’s something I enjoy: art. Yes, it's frustrating some days, bent over the drawing board for hours, trying to get an image to work. But when the image finally works, the satisfaction is total—and, anyway, nothing could be as frustrating as working forty hours a week in an office doing something I don’t enjoy. I did that for years, decades, and never want to go back to that life, never want to work a "regular" job again. Therefore, my prayer every day is that I can make this self-employment thing work.
Europe seems like a distant dream now. Hard to believe it was only two-and-a-half months ago … memories come back, in no particular order … standing outside the Hampstead tube station in the twilight waiting for Carol and Bruce … strange dark buildings … Royal Opera House, trying to stay awake during Carmen, and not succeeding … slept with my eyes open, the movements on the stage and music combining with my dreams … my daughter and I walking through Kensington Gardens, the wind roaring in the trees … train to Rotterdam … Marcel and I walking back to his place from a pub late at night, waiting for a barge to pass under the drawbridge … Utrecht … dinner with Albo and his family … later, stoned and lost in mysterious old Amsterdam, paranoid … funny now but not funny at the time … all so far away …
I think I miss London most of all, the time with my daughter … the snow on Tower Bridge … our flat in Chelsea, sinking into my bed at night, worn-out and satisfied, thinking "this is London, wow" … the OXO Tower, martinis and the view of St. Paul’s and all of London spread out under the twilight sky … all so far away … like a distant dream from this present vantage point, sitting here in hot old Texas after a day at the drawing board …
And a few weeks later Diane and I would be in Port Aransas … that was a good time too … sitting on the balcony of our condo in the evenings, looking at the moonlit breakers … the Gulf of Mexico’s eternal tide … wind sweeping the dunes … and early in the morning the sun orange over the water … shucking oysters …
Strange old world … strange new life …
Some time after my return from Europe and before Port Aransas, I went to Dallas to visit family, and while there saw my father’s grave in the National Cemetery. First time I had been to the cemetery since he died a year before, first time to see his marker, his name engraved in cold stone with the dates of his birth and death, the bookends of his time on Earth … life without him is now one year old …
And life without my day job, the one I worked for 25 years, is now five months old, almost half a year … wow … there was a time I thought I’d never leave that place, thought that job would always be my life, no escape ever … awful little dark cramped office they stuck me in that last year … ugh … the horror … but now, it seems no distant like it never happened … much more distant than Europe … a strange and distant dream, that job, and thank God … but the strangest thing of all is who I used to be when I worked there … that’s how much the past five months have changed me, already …
Strange old world … strange new life … distant dreams … idle thoughts … summer solstice coming soon, and then what …
posted by Mack White at 4:59 PM
