Being an Old Man

I have noticed that I have felt a bit down today and there are some factors that go into this. Sometime today or tomorrow at the latest would be when I would send out my monthly email to my work colleagues. I know that it wasn't ever officially part of my job and that I said I did it just because I wanted to, but I guess people thought it was actually part of my job, so that became a bit of an issue. I have done some thinking/reflecting over this month, but really I just need to let it go.

Part of me though has this thought that if I don't send an email then no one will know that I am still around and even forget about me. Like sometimes you hear people on TV or movie stars say things like if they aren't on the screen after so much time, then people forget them. If everyone then forgets about me, then that means that no one really cared about me or my emails in the first place. I know that is an exaggeration, but when I see that hardly anyone looks at my site or reads my posts, it makes me feel a bit sad and lonely. But at the same time, I am still writing posts and giving updates because for some reason, I always need to be writing something because at the end of the day, yes, I want to be seen and heard, but also it is a major form of release for me.

So, with that being said I have a lot to talk about. I'll start by talking about how I am becoming or basically already am an old man trapped in a fit, young body, haha!

First, I met my friend for a show/concert last night at a bar where I have met him a few times and find it interesting. It is definitely what I would consider a kind of counter culture bar with the artwork, people, shows and the whole vibe that the place has. I am not saying that I necessarily find it to be a place I would naturally go into on my own, but at the same time it is a very accepting place no matter who you are. The first time I met my friend there I went on a full on rant full of f-bombs, talking and complaining about all kinds of stuff; basically the opposite of the cool and collected "Ty" that I usually see myself as, so after that I think I thought, yeah it's a place I can feel okay and be myself at to a certain extent.

Anyway, when you are a man and married and have a thirteen-year old daughter with an active schedule, it seems hard to have friends or for that matter find time to hang out with people. I feel like this one friend, is the only "genuine" friend, (I hate to use the word genuine, but there we go) I have in this town and he isn't even going to be around this summer, but we are going on a four-week trip to in the middle of July. Jihyun sometimes says things to me like how do I know if this person or most of my friends actually like me or want to hang out because I am always the one that initiates things or has to initiate things it seems like when I meet someone who I want to get to know better or be friends with. Sometimes this raises a state of quandary for me because I do not want to bother anyone or make them feel like they have to hang out with me because they feel bad, but then at the same time I believe that if someone I considered to be a friend actually didn't want to hang out with me or be friends then there would be signs. But sometimes I struggle with this and especially lately since there have been some very good friends of mine that I haven't heard from in a while and I know life is busy and all of that, but it is hard and at the same time I don't want to be aggressive and bother them because they might be going through something. I recognize that I am a social creature and as much as I like to be alone at times and have peace and quiet; I need friends to talk to besides Jihyun, who is ulitmately my best friend, and knows me better than any other person.

Woah, I digressed. . .so back to the part about being an old man. So, last night I met my friend at the bar at 7:30 and the show was to start at 8 and then I told him I have to leave by 9 because I have to wake up at 3:45 in the morning for my job answering phone calls for the 988 National Suicide Prevention LIfeline and wanted to try to get at least six hours of sleep (I only got about five). Anyway, I got a beer and we talked and hung-out and that was fine, but the show didn't start until like 8:15-8:20,, of course. My friend was totally relaxed and in a good mood (I was a bit jealous) because always in the back of my mind I was thinking about how much sleep was I going to get later because anymore I am shooting for around seven hours and need to go to bed sometime between 7:30-8:00 in the evening to feel rested enough and if I don't get enough sleep, everything starts to feel bad and not great. Last night I made an exception and wanted to in order to spend time with my friend and possibly see a cool show.

Finally, the show started and to say it wasn't exactly my style is an understatement. It was this young guy who had a laptop, like a mixer type device I am guessing, and a mic. It was like digitally created beats and sounds (which wasn't bad), but then he started singing/yelling into the mic and I could not make out one word he said (I am guessing that was part of the performance), but all I could do was smile and kind of nod and move my head to the music like my friend was doing and as people walked by and would smile at me. I found that a bit weird and almost said something to my friend because I am not sure why these people were smiling at us, but I just smiled too. I left at 9 right as the first guy finished, which was disappointing because I wanted to see the other acts because I saw like instruments like a trumpet and a violin/fiddle. I am glad that I went though and my friend invited me even though he knows we are probably very different in terms of musical tastes and various things, it gives me new perspectives.

I texted my friend this morning and he said I missed some "special" stuff, but he wasn't sure if I would've liked it. Yeah, I mean I am open minded and realize where we were, but maybe I would have just stood there and just thought "how interesting" are something along those lines. I do hope to go back for a show later though and be able to stay the entire time or at least longer on a night where I don't have to work the next morning. I say all of this because maybe this is a sign of being an old man that I am not up for being at bars for shows with music or performers that I am not actaully connecting to and just find it to be loud and almost annoying. Not to mention the fact, that I realized last night that I haven't really been to a concert since college and that made me feel a bit sad and also old. Okay, no will move on with this post.

Another way that I am an old man is last week I bought a hummingbird feeder and hung it out on the backporch. I think on Monday I saw the first hummingbird come to the feeder. Now one (it might be the same one) comes five or six times a day and it is exciting. I think hummingbirds are majestic creatures! I remember when I was growing up in the Ozarks and we had a hummingbird feeder on our deck, sometimes there would be as much as six to eight hummingbirds out there.

Some of the garlic plants that we planted in October are starting to get scapes on them, which is exciting. I think that a bit later this week, I will be able to cut some of them off and use. I would like to try roasting some scapes up and eating them like a side dish with a meal.

I suppose all my enthusiasm and gardening makes me an old man too.

Below you can see the beautiful flowers that my snowpea plants are producing. The breed is called Green Beauty and I would say the plants are probably 4-5 feet tall right now. I tried the first one today and it was great. I hope they produce a farily nice amount (at least for a salad or something) before the heat really starts to cause problems and shut them down.

One thing that probably truly puts me an the "old man" category is my love for growing Chamomiles and the excitement that they survived the winter and now are huge plants and May has been a productive month of harvesting the young flowers for tea! I love chamomile and its sweet apple flavor and calming effect at night. I even wrote a poem about it that I shared with my colleagues earlier in the year.

What else makes me an old man? Well, today I went to Goodwill and found a glass bowl that is beautiful for salads or I guess you could even put a punch in it and a glass flower vase. I got them both for a total of eight dollars and some change!

This makes me happy and I would like nothing else then to be able to just spend my days gardening, cooking and baking delicious food, reading, writing, and visiting or entertaining friends or family at my house! Don't get me wrong, I love to travel, but not all the time.

Speaking of reading and writing. I am currently reading a novel called The Sense of Wonder by Matthew Salesses who is a Korean, but was adopted by an American family. He writes around themes of cultural identity and Korean masculinity. The novel is based around a Korean American NBA star (who is nicknamed Wonder), his girlfriend, a Korean American who makes TV shows and wants to bring K-dramas to the US, and then another Korean American who doesn't want to be identified as Korean or put in the "Asian" category. It is quite interesting to read the different views that Koreans have about white people and Americans and even themselves. My wife is Korean and my daughter is Korean American, so it is important for me to read a lot of these different voices.

An interesting part of this novel is how Matthew Salesses weaves in the plot of a Korean drama that Wonder's girlfriend is shooting as a director and how that connects to the main story itself. There are even some facts that I did not even realize like how most Korean directors are men, but all the writers of Korean dramas are women. How the dramas are shot quickly over a couple of months and even simultaneously as the drama is airing on TV and means that the crew and actors work extremely long hours and the stars have to find ways to sleep between scenes in their trailers. Besides the stars, most of the crew doesn't make that much money and Korean companies want to do them fast in order to save a lot of money. There is also an explanation of the typical tropes, the pattern that all Korean dramas (especially the romantic ones) follow like how the two characters usually are connected somehow without realizing it, hate each other at the beginning, connect as they share each other's problems and burdens and worries, worrrying about the other person's worries, and then finally realizing they have fallen in love. There is hardly any mention or show of sex besides kissing in these dramas. It makes me wonder how many Koreans have grown up with these ideas about how love and relationships are supposed to work based off of the usual Korean drama plot map and around ideas of fate and destiny that usually appear in these dramas. It makes me think of my own love story and relationship with Jihyun, did we follow the plot of a typical Korean drama, were we supposed to? I think this novel also shows in a sense or tries to show white people why Asians often see them as selfish or not caring about other people or the other person's feelings because that is central to Korean culture and many Asian cultures. It is interesting to read and makes me wonder about how much of our lives we actually control and make on our own and how much of it is basically decided for us by our culture without us realizing that we never had a say in the courses for our own lives from the start.

As far as writing, I started to work on the spy novel a little bit, but quickly realize that it is going to be a major time commitment. I have started to concentrate more on my poems or short proses about smells, which are actually quite intimate and close to my heart. (See the last post that is titled Lavender.) I am not sure if I have been influenced unconsciuosly this past year when I read The Geographical History of America by Gertrude Stein and enjoyed it, some of Walt Whitman's poems from Leaves of Grass, and most recently I read or at least part of In the Heart of The Heart of the Country by William Gass. There were things that I connected to specifically in how William Gass described the landscape and people of northern Indiana. I found it interesting how he said men are made for the country and not the city or something along those lines and I felt like I agreed with him. I liked when he talked about his cat and how he always went back to poetry like it was his good friend. In some ways, I feel that about writing in general. I always keep a journal in which I write ALL my thoughts, fears, hopes, everything; most of which I would never share.

But back to my own writing, which seems to have been focused more on these poems/prose about smells especially in nature and the natural world. A couple of days ago, I wrote a deeply intimate, sensual, almost spiritual (in my opinion) about the smell of the forest. I am not sure if anyone will ever see it and I would feel almost embarrassed showing others, but as a writer I cannot think about how others might veiw me based on what I write and how that would make me feel, I just have to write!

This ended up being quite long and I think this post has shown more than enough evidence of how I am an old man or at least a man with a very old soul!