“All the darkness. I’m going to walk into the light.”  — Job

I’ve read about the vintage man in spiritual books for years. I think I am becoming a vintage man as I age and learn and change. Sometimes I think I’m aging well, like a good wine.

I know by now, this vintage man will never be a great wine, but I have high hopes for being a good one.

The difference between a great vintage man and a good one is the novice will lay down his tool or brush or imagination and smash whatever he is making, hoping to do better.

The vintage man stops hurting himself or anyone else and keeps on creating. As he tiptoes towards the darkness, he is always looking for the light.

I sometimes feel that I’ve entered a new phase of life in recent months. It’s a beautiful time and a challenging time.

In a sense, this has to do with my heart more than my life. I get broody in the days before heart surgery, I get reflective and start thinking about my life. I mean, how often does one get to have heart surgery? It’s a big deal.

I try to give myself a break. If I don’t get broody then, then when? Living with me, Maria has become wise in the ways of craziness. Just go with it, she says.

My heart is a guidepost; it marks the passage of my life. I paid no attention to my heart; it just worked for me and caused me no trouble.

In a sense, I am reborn, re-invented,  re-constructed. I have given up my book writing, and to be fair, publishing has given up on me. We circled one another and met for the last time. It was, as they say, mutual.

That was a big change, even bigger than my heart troubles. All my life, I wanted to be a book writer, and here I am towards the end, running away from it as if the hounds were after me.

There were so many changes in my life – divorce, madness, loneliness, the blog, my photos, Maria,  betrayal, and at last, a broken heart.

Life changes, grace is changing with it.

My heart leads the way.  Love heals all. Surgery can help.

When my heart is good, I am good, and once in a while, I have to give it a helping hand, do my part to make it good. I live in a time of miracles; I know the doctors can take a young and make it young.

I’m not sure I deserve these second chances. I have to take responsibility for myself. My heart has always deserved better than me. I’ll try to repay the debt this time.

I smoked until my daughter was born, I drank until I was well into middle age. I gave up exercising forty years ago, except for the long walks I loved to take and still love to take.

I abandoned my family and went mad.

I almost never saw a doctor, I was beyond it, one of those smug holistic people who were sure they could get through it eating herbs and taking some funny-smelling vegan pills.

Ha!

My heart was fine with it all until one day six years ago when I could barely walk across the street, went to see my nurse practitioner, and ended up in the hospital for four days until a surgeon could crack me open, as they say, and repair some of the arteries to my heart.

My heart attack was a message from above. Stop screwing around and get it together.

When I feel fine, as I usually do, that is the secret signal for me to rationalize and forget some lessons.

After all, I have so much to live for, I can no longer bear to throw it away. Not too long ago, I was counting the minutes until I could throw it away.

Today, I got a schedule a foot long from my cardiologists.  My increasingly famous heart sank.

The next few weeks are all about my heart. A catheterization this coming Thursday, and next week, a look at the carotid arteries, they may or may not need some attention.

I have forms to fill out, ultrasound to get,  blood to drawn nurse-practitioners to see, catheter specialists to talk so, cardiac re-hab (tomorrow) follow-up visits, covoid-19 tests. Sometimes I think I’m going to be seeing doctors and getting tests every day for the rest of my life.

Yet that is the narrow view of things. And it isn’t true. Freedom isn’t free. I have to work for it, and perhaps bleed a bit more.

In a few weeks, the mist will clear, I’ll be at my computer, fussing with my photos, riding my bike along quiet and flat country roads.

After my first “intervention” a few weeks ago, my heart is already stronger, I am walking up hills again, getting in shape for the next intervention. I can hardly believe it.

If I listen, I can almost hear that stream of blood pouring up and into my deprived heart.

And in just a few days, there will be more blood than ever.

When it is all over, and if all goes well, I’ll have 100 percent of my blood flowing through all three major arteries, a miraculous bit of technology that would not have been possible even a few years ago, and I almost surely would have been dead by now.

I am facing a lot more years now, and good years. I’m more anxious than I was before, this procedure is more complex and I have to go to a major trauma hospital with a cardiac surgeon nearby just in case.

It’s just round two for my heart, a cleanup and rebirth. If the surgeon is right, I’ll have a much stronger and improved heart on Friday. I can’t wait to try it out.

I’ll do all the follow-ups and bring some new energy and perspective to my life. I will continue to support the Mansion and Bishop Maginn, the Army of Good is intact and ready to do good, as always.

The very thought of it lifts my heart. I am looking forward to this rebirth, Maria is loving and supportive, I never take her for granted.  We are lucky to have our work, our farm, our animals, each other. Every day of that is a miracle.

So this week is just another space to cross, another geography. I’ve had a lot of bad times that were so much worse than this. I look forward to getting on my e-bike and sailing around the hills.

2020 is a wearing year, it just wears people down, it keeps coming.

Sometimes, inside and out of my life, there’s just too much to consider, too much to understand and analyze, too many consequences and possibilities to dance around in my head, too many things to move around, throw out, re-organize, fear, too much clutter in my head and outside of my head.

Sometimes, I am learning, the very best thing to do is drop all of it and go outside with a dog and walk out from everything that is weighing me down up a hill or into the woods, taking pictures as I go

I have learned to sit quietly and be myself and like, sometimes love, who I am. Once in a while, I like to walk around and leave the problems I have and others have behind.

And then, what happens is that I see a beautiful photograph a refugee student has taken with a camera we bought.

I see a Bishop Mann student with asthma coming to school because of a special mask we found. Or a Mansion resident with shoes that fit, and a warm blanket for bed that we bought.

Or beautiful paint we bought so the Mansion residents could draw. Or I think of the food cards that kept those hard-pressed families from going hungry when the pandemic first panicked the world.

And I feel my heart lift up and sing, and so do I lift up and sing. Sweet.

I think sometimes I see surgery as a defeat, a failure.

And then, this morning, I just lowered my head and walked up a mile-long hill without stopping even once, no pain in my chest, no shortness of breath, no throbbing heart.

Another miracle.

And I think okay, okay, sit quietly and stop thinking about trouble or problems and accept that my being is whole and content and full of meaning, whether life sometimes intrudes or not.

What do I expect? What I am I but a human being, a micro-being, with all of the glories and triumphs and failures of the human?

I think there are different wells within each of us. The vintage man is always looking for a good rain.