Still in the Napa Valley.
Yesterday, a warmish walk in the late evening around the hospital grounds. Today a tad longer walk around this little hillside settlement of Deer Park, where the hospital is.
My friend R.O. told me the other day that I have a really strange life. "You spend five days every two weeks in the lap of luxury that is the Napa Valley; then you are home for the rest of the time hanging out with the Rednecks in Concow". Yup. It is different. I like it that way.
For how much longer will I have this "different life"? I don't know. Seems that cuts are in the wind. 50 jobs lost in our hospital last Friday. Uncertain times in an uncertain occupation (psychiatry).
Back to walking. Such a joy it is to just take a simple walk. Tonight I watched two Stellar Jays squabble with two Scrub Jays. I looked at them and asked, in Rodney King fashion, "Can't you guys just get along"?
I rarely see anybody on these walks. Maybe a nurse now and then walking to their car. Even when I take a walk in the small towns around here, like St. Helena--I almost never see a pedestrian in the residential sections of town. Pedestrians are becoming a rare sighting--as rare as the wolverines that have just re-established themselves in the Sierra. Or Jaguars in Arizona.
Another thought while walking today: Community is the antidote to consumerism. We don't need to keep up with the Jones'--we need to take a walk with the Jones'. Flights into materialism and consumerism, I think, are spurred more by innate loneliness than a desire to have something. Create walking communities and I bet the need for things goes way down.
Being lonely is good for business. I think that is why they created suburbs.
3 comments:
Take a walk with the Jones' - what a great concept!
I've been visiting New York. Everybody walks and everybody takes the subway. This brings the rich and the poor, the young and old, the sane and creative close enough to see what we are reading and hear what we are mumbling. People smile and even talk a little, not like what you think a subway is. And a lot of folks sit on the steps of apartments, or lean against street trees and talk and listen and buy watermelon from small markets. You could say these folks don't buy because they don't have the money, but I think they don't buy because they have what they need which seems to be a multitude of friends. I agree, community is the antidote.
Thanks Guys!
And a further corollary: our community includes all the rocks, trees, fauna, flora and dirt. We just need to expand what it means to be social to the other plant, mineral and animal kingdoms...
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