Words To Live By 10

"I'm gonna die with my boots on."

The first time I really remember hearing this saying was in 2001, just following an earthquake.  Now, we do not get a lot of earthquakes here in Vancouver and when they occur they are scarcely felt.  ("Did the earth move for you, darling?" he asked.  "Oh Yes!" she lied, "Yes, yes, yes, a hundred times, a thousand times, YES!)

I have seldom felt the earth move.  During an earthquake, I mean.  Certainly not during our infrequent little milquetoast tremors that occur every five to ten years.  Meanwhile we are regularly, sometimes daily, reminded and exhorted to make ourselves earthquake ready.  We have to have a regular store of emergency supplies: canned food, bottled water, candles, matches, flashlights, batteries,  battery operated radios; and we are in many workplaces taken through regular earthquake emergency drills, and money is constantly being put aside to upgrade old buildings that would otherwise crumble like dead leaves in a major earthquake and especially during the proto-legendary "Big One" that is supposed to wipe out the entire West Coast and convert Richmond into a vast wok of hot and sour soup any time between this evening and three hundred years from now.

And earthquake or no earthquake, I'm gonna die with my boots on.  That's what a friend of mine said about me when I told him that when the earthquake that struck that day in 2001, the day of my forty-fifth birthday I was painting.  I paused for a few seconds, waiting for the shaking and rattling to stop, then continued to apply brush and paint to the canvas.  I didn't know what else to do.  It was a mild quake, more of a tremor, Three point something on the scale.  What's the big deal?  It wasn't the Big One.  "Is that all there is?  Is that all there is?  If that's all there is, my friend, then let's keep dancing.  Let's break out the booze and have a ball, if that's all there is." 

I have always loved that song made famous in 1969 by the Great Peggy Lee during my parent's ugly and bitter divorce.  Is that all there is to a divorce?  (Dad: Did the earth move for you?" Mom: "Shut up!")

Is that all there is to an earthquake?  The ground shakes for a while and nothing gets destroyed.  Or the ground heaves and groans in a gigantic tectonic orgasm swallowing whole entire cities.  Is that all there is to an earthquake?

A couple of months ago, when I expressed interest to some people I was having coffee with one day, my interest in continuing to work into my seventies and even into my eighties if I can, an elderly woman in our group warned me, likely with the best of intentions, that I shouldn't make any plans because there is no telling what might befall me.  As true as her words were she was delivering them much like a witch invoking a curse and, if you read some of my blog posts just after that time, late April and early May of this year, I was having an awful time of things after her little warning.

Regardless of what happens, whether I live to one hundred ten and fade off into sleep, succumb to Alzheimer's next year, suffer a stroke, arthritis, Lou Gehrig's, death by accident or earthquake I am going to continue living out my dreams and my passion: I am going to continue to dream, continue to paint, write, advocate for vulnerable people, support others towards recovery, speak Spanish and as long as I have working legs take long hikes in the forest here or through the streets and markets of foreign cities.  Even when I have to stop, I'm not gonna.  I'm gonna die with my boots on.