Life as Hobby

My motivation, for not accepting a scholarship for graduate school in my early 20's, was a naive belief in artistic integrity. Those that can... DO, those who can't... TEACH.

Ironically, years later, I did do a Masters degree, specifically in Teaching. Abandoning both my art ambitions and that now suspicious quest,  'Art for Art sake'. I grew to see family as my purpose and pleasure, and art as an elusive commercial enterprise, controlled, for the most part, by and for the social elite.

In other words, I wasn't good enough to make a decent living, nor focused enough to maintain my life as a forever starving New Yorker. Instead I created a deeper diversion, into the dubious depths of Zen Buddhism. I mistook 'enlightened' as a 'get out of jail free' card... came to Japan, fervently dissipated my New Age diversions, taught English, and abundantly proliferated.

I often point out to my English language students that native speakers do not ask about hobbies, as these are questions reserved for a child or retired older folk. Instead we ask "what do you do?" (job) "what do you do for fun?" (interests). In Japanese schools 'hobby' is more generic and easier for direct translation versus my pedantic explanation.

In reflection, I've come to see, 'Life as my hobby.'  For work I teach, at least for a couple more years. For fun I contemplate that great abyss down at the end of the darkened hall. That great 'get out of jail card' reserved for us all. So painfully simple... Brutally true to expedience and momentary pleasure, with a sprinkling of higher purpose, to save face... you know... for appearance sake.

Life is my hobby, though not quite as fun as it used to be. Dis-ease being the great equalizer of old age, after a life in the bright light of a candle burning both ends. Fun has to be pursued by the elderly. It no longer springs forth, but is discovered amongst the discomforts. Chi is divided out in smaller and smaller doses by a god of amicable disposition though tested patience.

Life remains as good as it gets, more a hobby than a quest... more a dim lit urge than a force to be reckoned with.

The fading loss of Lov-e.com

I am still letting go of Lov-e.com, my long suffering website... a digital space in which I invested uncountable swirls of creation, and now surrender to digital absolution.

I will no longer host this personal internet play-land. No longer bleed days, weeks, and months researching, building, in a mental world of pointless pointing... the great vacuous potential.

I did love deeply the creative process, riding the wave of new technology and the pedagogical potential. And now I am forced to face the inevitable obsolesce of both my vision and skill. In our sixties 'letting go' is a twisted knot, a daily discipline of untangling.

Lov-e was an acronym for Learning Online Virtually Everything. A grand adventure creating web pages full of interconnecting links, on all and anything that caught my fancy. Caught in that dream, I produced countless pages. Interfacing with students, or self-absorbed in this seductive electronic mirror, I blitzed out for weeks on end. Time spent in that deep well gazing at my reflection... A deep dark delusion of relevance, lightly lifted by dancing fireflies, pixels of pleasure.