The Things He Lost in the Fire and Jerome the Barber, Part II
"The things you own end up owning you."
- Tyler Durden in Fight Club
"From the outside, loss has an almost spiritual, cleansing quality about it. Then again, loss is a lot easier to deal with when it's not your own."
- ZA
Last night started like any normal "last night." I got off work, got a Gatorade and headed to swim practice. I'm warmin' up, you know, just gettin' the kinks out, and I see one of my fellow Masters swimmers approach the pool and just lay down. It was just one of those moments when you know someone is out of sorts. I swim over to the wall, get out of the pool.
"You doing okay," I ask.
"Did you hear what happened?"
"No. What happened?"
"My house burned down."
When I hear this my first thought is, You don't live in San Diego. Then I realize that he means his house here in Arizona burned down. My eyes widen. Holy shit, this guy just lost his house.
I know that when shit happens to me I would need a long, hard swim to beat out the excess nervous energy. And I also know that I wouldn't want to be spending a lot of time alone.
"All right, dude. Well, not sure if you have any plans, but you are welcome to join me and some friends for dinner." He accepts, and we share a lane.
After the workout we head over to the remnants of his house. From the outside the place looks normal. We open the gate, and the entire side of the house is missing. I can see inside. It is dark, full of still wet insulation, and charred everything. The house smells like soot, sulfur, and something else chemical. I take a deep breath and think to myself, "This is the smell of loss."
The world can take a lot of things from you. It can take our job, your house--as I saw last night--a whole slew of possessions, etc. If you spend your life collecting objects thinking that it's your "Life" then losing everthing you own in a fire is going to sting pretty good. Fortunately, my fellow swimmer has spent most of his life helping people, building skills, traveling, etc. He's rattled, but this loss hasn't totally destroyed him. As my favorite blogger, Gordon Byrn, once said, "Collect experiences, not objects."
I'm still in the process of building my life right now. There's not a whole lot for me to lose. With that said, it was still really horrible to hear about somone I see regularly lost a lifetime of possessions. I think this has to do with the realization that it is entirely possible that the same thing could happen to me. That's the wild part.
So that's what I am thinking about: loss. Thinking about wanting to go buy some new shirts, but also recognizing that three $100 shirts are just material objects. That said, I have a real weak spot for a great looking dress shirt. I'm not going to fight this about myself, just recognize it and be aware of it.
Got a haircut yesterday. It turns out that Jerome the Barber was a courier in is younger years. He traveled to South America and Europe dropping stuff off. A couple times he had a metal brief case handcuffed to his arm. He said it was kind of cool, except that it was really hard to use the bathroom with a metal brief case handcuffed to your arm. It's something to think about.
Got some new running shoes today. The ones I had were trashed from the trail run adventure. The arch was totally shot, and the cushion was totally gone in the toe box. I'll break them in tomorrow morning. I'm going to try to do 30 runs in 30 days. I can already hear MAD telling me that this is a little overboard, but it's worth a shot.
That's all I got in the tank right now. We'll see if I have anything substantial to say tomorrow.
Namaste
- Tyler Durden in Fight Club
"From the outside, loss has an almost spiritual, cleansing quality about it. Then again, loss is a lot easier to deal with when it's not your own."
- ZA
Last night started like any normal "last night." I got off work, got a Gatorade and headed to swim practice. I'm warmin' up, you know, just gettin' the kinks out, and I see one of my fellow Masters swimmers approach the pool and just lay down. It was just one of those moments when you know someone is out of sorts. I swim over to the wall, get out of the pool.
"You doing okay," I ask.
"Did you hear what happened?"
"No. What happened?"
"My house burned down."
When I hear this my first thought is, You don't live in San Diego. Then I realize that he means his house here in Arizona burned down. My eyes widen. Holy shit, this guy just lost his house.
I know that when shit happens to me I would need a long, hard swim to beat out the excess nervous energy. And I also know that I wouldn't want to be spending a lot of time alone.
"All right, dude. Well, not sure if you have any plans, but you are welcome to join me and some friends for dinner." He accepts, and we share a lane.
After the workout we head over to the remnants of his house. From the outside the place looks normal. We open the gate, and the entire side of the house is missing. I can see inside. It is dark, full of still wet insulation, and charred everything. The house smells like soot, sulfur, and something else chemical. I take a deep breath and think to myself, "This is the smell of loss."
The world can take a lot of things from you. It can take our job, your house--as I saw last night--a whole slew of possessions, etc. If you spend your life collecting objects thinking that it's your "Life" then losing everthing you own in a fire is going to sting pretty good. Fortunately, my fellow swimmer has spent most of his life helping people, building skills, traveling, etc. He's rattled, but this loss hasn't totally destroyed him. As my favorite blogger, Gordon Byrn, once said, "Collect experiences, not objects."
I'm still in the process of building my life right now. There's not a whole lot for me to lose. With that said, it was still really horrible to hear about somone I see regularly lost a lifetime of possessions. I think this has to do with the realization that it is entirely possible that the same thing could happen to me. That's the wild part.
So that's what I am thinking about: loss. Thinking about wanting to go buy some new shirts, but also recognizing that three $100 shirts are just material objects. That said, I have a real weak spot for a great looking dress shirt. I'm not going to fight this about myself, just recognize it and be aware of it.
Got a haircut yesterday. It turns out that Jerome the Barber was a courier in is younger years. He traveled to South America and Europe dropping stuff off. A couple times he had a metal brief case handcuffed to his arm. He said it was kind of cool, except that it was really hard to use the bathroom with a metal brief case handcuffed to your arm. It's something to think about.
Got some new running shoes today. The ones I had were trashed from the trail run adventure. The arch was totally shot, and the cushion was totally gone in the toe box. I'll break them in tomorrow morning. I'm going to try to do 30 runs in 30 days. I can already hear MAD telling me that this is a little overboard, but it's worth a shot.
That's all I got in the tank right now. We'll see if I have anything substantial to say tomorrow.
Namaste
posted by Zen_Accountant at 8:48 AM
1 Comments:
You re-filled your "tank" pretty quickly - you posted again at 12!
Anyway, I feel for your friend. I can't imagine what it would feel like to lose everything. Although I dream about doing just that. I spend my life collecting things, but hate the fact that I've got so much junk around. Strange huh? I often envy those who can shed themselves of their possessions, but I know I can't ever be like them. I'm emotional and sentimental but for the most part I have a bad memory. If I lost my "things" chances are I would lose those memories. That would be the devastating part.
30 runs in 30 days isn't necessarily overdoing it, just depends on how hard you run. For me, right now, 30 stairs in 30 days is overdoing it!
MAD
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