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Can "Apathy" be a verb?*

   I'm looking out at a sea of green, muted with a fog. The fog likely spells rain and no outside chores today. For today the only music is the chirping of the birds and the buzz of hummers diving past me to the feeders. A man with a plan could accomplish much before any rain or heat slowed him down. Me, I'm pondering 'apathy', the last few sips of my coffee and remembering fondly my year bartending at Guthries on the harbor in the Virgin Islands.

 The ponder might be apathy - might be detoxing. Apathy gets a bad name but has apathy ever started a war? In my younger life Dewars was the fuel for problems. For the world I think it might just be doers. As I write that I have to immediately temper it with recognition that some doer created and made this laptop. The morning would still be as beautiful without technology but the the peace would be broken with the sound of me chiseling on a stone tablet. "Honey, I'm running out of stone could you get me some more!"

  The detoxing piece is more likely. Any life accumulates stuff. Physical stuff, mental stuff, habits and routines it's good to sit and sort through the pile. Trash, donate, keepers and a few wistful 'Boy I need to do more of thats'. At different times in my life I've detoxed on a hike with a dog and once with an extended visit to the Virgin Islands. Today it's a deck off a mobile home pondering the green of cedars, oaks and grass.

  None of us knows how long we get to live. I'd like to think I'll have time to write one more chapter in my life but, what is that chapter about? Deb and I have uprooted a nice life in Colorado but we haven't landed in Nirvana. Life will be as much 'what we make of it' here as it was there. Yet part of the detoxing is getting Colorado out of my head. So forgive me if I ramble a bit like an ex sitting at a bar with his back to a spectacular harbor scene. I'll see the harbor eventually but first I have to de-clutter.

  Colorado is a dramatic, spectacular, beautiful state and it's now too crowded. Yeah, that's a situational thing. When I last hiked up to Hanging Lake, after a solitary bicycle ride through Glenwood canyon along the Colorado river, I couldn't wait to share the giddy awe of her beauty with someone. (The Libertarians I was there with were unavailable as they were indoors arguing some minor point in a bylaws document - just saying!) Now, in order to manage the popularity, you need to schedule a permit to hike to Hanging Lake. I own two vehicles (3 if you count Deb's) and pay way too much in fees taxes, insurance, and maintenance for the little driving I do, but this is not about the money (we'll get there). Two days ago we drove, at the speed limit, (OK, slightly below to the consternation of a few locals!) for a total of 4 hours. Yeah through a city an' everything, I swear! I recall trips to our cabin. Deb and I would always discuss should we plan to leave the cabin early or wait to avoid the traffic on the drive home to Denver. It's like dating a beautiful girl who becomes a starlet. Sometimes you just want some us time.

  Colorado is the birthplace of the Libertarian Party and I am a libertarian to the core.  Hell, if you choose to consume Fentanyl to avoid whatever greater tragedy your life holds, go for it! You should be able to buy it for a nickel, by cutting out the cartels, at the same place you buy your cigarettes, booze, and weed. Thing is it tests a libertarians patience when his cabin is burned down in a forest fire started by a 'homeless' person who 'forgot' his campfire. When an old libertarian wants to pretend he's still cool by going downtown to meet some friends, it shouldn't be about finding a parking space close enough to be safe. Colorado might be the home to the mythological Galt's Gulch but the gulch up the street was starting to get too real. Richard used to be 'the' local schizophrenic who hung out in the area after the lite-rail was built. Richard would pay for his coffee at the Starbucks but was a bit of a slob in his camping habits. Nothing really that the private and public clean up crews couldn't handle, just one guy. After the Rite Aid (next to the gulch) closed the owners were 'encouraged' to put up fencing to keep it from becoming a homeless KOA. (would that be an HOA :-) The gulch next door, well no one really owns that so... Walking with Cooper past the area on my Saturday walk started becoming a bit too - I'll just say 'interesting'. Libertarians believe in self government. Self government stands on two legs, two interconnected pieces Rights and responsibilities. Said another way 'You don't tell me what to do or not - I tell me'. Colorado once, like many places, needed to be goosed by the Libertarian Party to remember the left leg of Rights. It now needs to be remember that other leg, responsibilities. Perhaps the libertarians that remain can step up to that role. For me life is too short to be attached to a mate who has gone from colorful to too colorful.  

  Yeah, and money. I can tell myself what, if any, drugs I want to consume who I choose to sleep with (heck what 'sex' I am). I can decide what 'news' I click on and what protection I carry. That same adult who can do all those things and more, can enjoy my money as I see fit. Miser or philanthropist 'nobody's business what I do'! I've made some really really stupid decisions with money and the little bit that I do have came about as a combination of luck and hard work. It also came about because I had the good fortune to live in a place and a time that had a structure of law that allowed the accumulation of wealth. As many of you know Coloradans some 30 years ago created an addition to our State Constitution called TABOR. TABOR said simply, government's share of my wealth can be this much and no more. Yeah sure we'll allow for growth in dollars collected based on population growth and inflation but otherwise if a group through government wants more they have to ask and people have to say yes. Those next 30 years have been a litany of being cajoled with appeals of "it's only a penny more". Threatened with we have money for the things 'we' want but the things 'you' are used to must be cut and of course straight out lied to that a fee is not a tax. They say money is the number one cause of discord in relationships. Discord implies a conversation, no matter how angry. 30 years of 'conversation' I'm tired, same conversation different day, I walked. "That's my story bartender. That's why I'm here. You got another one of these - what ' you call 'em pina what? - man that view is beautiful. You ever notice it when you're working ?"

  Yeah I noticed the view every shift I worked at Guthries. The place itself was a bit of a dive but the view 4 stars. I recall more than a few of the adjacent hotel's guests being mellowed by it when they found out the hotel ice machine wasn't working and I'd been forbidden to fill their little bucket with ice. OK the view and and a "hey they didn't say I couldn't comp you a pina colada with a little extra rum! Sit relax mahn!"

  I did fail to notice the beautiful garden of the house I was renting. (in my defense I was much younger and an idiot!) A previous tenant had put in lime trees and every tropical flower and bush one could imagine. I managed to notice the 'sugar birds' that would join me on the deck for morning coffee and 'steal' from the sugar bowl but missed more than a slight memory of the yard. Detoxing is funny that way, you don't know the future as you are usually busy sorting out the past. Thus I sit in a funny limbo not actively producing what I'll look back on as that next chapter. Or is that how new chapters begin?   

 There is a garden here. Eileen has kindly let me use an old bed for the potato onions and some spinach I slipped in between the onions was part of last night salad. But, is that my future? We have pick out a house and will be closed soon. So I have a simple sense of the yard and can imagine the most likely spots to grow veggies. This next year will be about learning. Asking questions, observing, maybe some trials and a lot more asking questions. Perhaps it will all follow a path similar to my last garden but we're talking the future here. So, what is the old saying 'Man plans the dogs laugh' or maybe that was 'the cat laughs'. Anyway, I've been working on my asking questions skills. It's oddly tough to ask a question and then actually listen. Deb has been her usual kind self and humored my insisting we go to farmers markets plant sales and the like so I can practice. Again, this is looking into a future but am I asking useful questions for the actual future? Doug A.

Robert Frost

 Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

  * My English major wife says Apathy can't be a verb (she did hesitate tho!) 'course a late friend, Doug Wilhelm, pointed out Libertarians hate being told no and will stand on their heads to prove the opposite. So I offer this challenge - use it in a sentence as a verb.

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