Part 2.   Summer 2021.   Vagrancy revisited

The Transition

There is a book that had been given to me by a good friend, called "Transitions"  which describes major life changes as being a story of new beginnings rather than traumatic endings, as with each ending, you find yourself having to rebuild your life again from scratch, all old habits having been washed away.   your old life gone.  It is a fearful moment.   Rather instead to look at the rebuilding as a positive moment of rebirth.

Truth is, we all go through one or two of these in life, and when you are young, there can be much excitement in meeting the rebuilding challenge.    As you get older though, and more secure in yourself, in Who You Are, suddenly having to change course and find a new way of living forces open the core challenge of re-examing Who You Are, a person you always thought you knew.  You never thought you would have to reexamine such a question this far down the line, but here you are.

Reading "Transitions" helped me.   I especially liked the section that describes the solitary journey that begins after the ending of the Old Life and before the beginning of the New Life as a lonely walk through a dark valley in which you need to rebuild yourself.   That no one can do it for you.  That it is painful, and necessary.   That there will eventually be the other side to the valley, and that you will reach it.    I find that kind of thinking comforting as it is hopeful.

4 years after Michelle divorcing me, I am not yet sure I have reached the other side of that valley, though I am hopeful.   My walk through the Valley has been expressed in my own life as my move to Bandon, Oregon.   A small beautiful coastal town.   A place where I thought I could rebuild myself, rage at the lonely valley in my own private way, but also make good friends along the way, and start to figure out who I am now in my 60s, and who I want to be.    The life I want to live.   Another dadism:  When you don't know how you want to live  your life, the only answer is to live it, put one foot forward after the other, see what happens, and hope for the best.

The House

I found Bandon by riding my bicycle down the Oregon Coast in the summer of 2017.    The summer Michelle walked up to me one day and said "I AM DONE".  Holy Shit.   

Michelle had given me half the money for the house in Santa Clara and I needed somewhere to live.   Bandon seemed like a pretty enough town where I could wear myself and my emotions out trying to get past a 30 year marriage and the gargantuan effort to rebuild my life.

I looked at a whole bunch of houses, and chose one that had been a rental for the previous 25 years, and needed a whole bunch of repair work.   Perfect for me as it would keep me busy for awhile, and my head out of my pain and anger for having my life partner walk out on me and being left alone this far along in my life.

The work on the house was as exhilarating as I hoped it would be.  Plenty to keep me busy within my skillsets.   Decking, fencing, painting.   Building furniture, fireplace work, kitchen remodeling, etc.    All told three and a half YEARS worth of work.   The first 6 months or so very quiet as I didn't know anyone in town, so most days were filled with me just working on the house.     But I volunteered in town as much as I could in those early days and began to meet people.  Eventually I built something of a life.   A marginal life, compared to the full family life I had known for the previous 20 odd years, but at least a life.

I think at this point I am just down to needing to resurface the kitchen floor then I am about done with the house.

The Walkabout

Which leads to the question of what to do next.     Now that the house is almost all fixed, what do I do next?  It is a 3 bedroom house, too big for just solitary me.  I live my life amidst empty rooms.  In truth I would like to have another house to work on, so maybe one idea is to sell the one I have and buy another smaller house that needs work.  That needs a friend.

Another question is what to do about Bandon.  It would be the perfect town for me to live in if I was 10 years further on, and a bit slower in life, but for me in my life right now,  the town is rather SMALL and slightly claustrophobic.  On top of that, I am still a bit lonely, and though a number of women have made a run at me, they are either too old for me or too young.    I have not found anyone who seems to fit with me, and the ones that I find attractive, are of course all too young for me.  An older man's delusions.   This leads me to think that if I am to find anyone, it will probably not be in Bandon.

Hence.   Hence my desire to sort of let go this summer, and explore, and let my current life situation cure a bit inside of me.   My own little Walkabout.    So I have rented my house for the summer, or rather into the fall, October 15, just about when the Bandon winter rains start.     My cat Tamale and I left Bandon on June 25 and headed down to Prescott Arizona to my sister Jill's house, where she and her family live on the edge of a beautiful high desert canyon.   25 road hours in an orange Mini Cooper with a cat on my lap the whole time.   And my walkabout summer had begun.