Pain: Physical/Mental?

 I am a total wuss for pain. This probably contributed to the fact that I am generally very risk-averse, and have reached the ripe old age of 50 without ever having broken a bone or otherwise gotten in any serious accidents. I have very little desire to skydive, or bungee jump, and until very recently, considered very dangerous things like motorcycles to be a non-starter. And this may also be why despite my years of "threatening" to get a tattoo, I have still yet to pull the trigger (although I do feel much closer now than I ever have before in my life)

What about mental pain? I have been lucky enough to not lose any loved ones. I had a close friend die in Korea, but this was after I had left Korea and so it did not really seem real. I also had a friend die at the Brooklyn church, but I cannot honestly say that he was a very close friend of mine. I liked him a lot and we were just in the early stages of a friendship. So all in all, I have again been mostly spared from the mental pain of losing loved ones.

Are there other sources of mental pain? Surely. There are always sources of pain stemming from relationships. Having children also opens up the parents to potentially very acute pain as well. Pain/stress of this type affects the body, and as it should: the body and mind are one and the same. When the body dies, you are dead. And when your brain/heart is in pain, the body reacts. This may present as indigestion. This may be a loss of appetite. This last one is truly rare for me, as I have always had a need to eat at very punctual and regular intervals. But lately, this is one manifestation, believe it or not.  Are there others? Loss of sexual drive? Motivation or ambition? Perhaps.

I can only take solace in the slow painful passage of time, and that in due course, the acute pain I feel will be resolved and I will feel as sunny as this beautiful summer day in New Jersey.

Walking in Troy

 I drove to Troy to pick up Yuna from her new gig working as a server at Sunhee's Farm and Kitchen. I got there early and parked the car and walked around the block. It was Cinco de Mayo, and kitty-corner from the restaurant, the Mexican taco place had set up an impromptu seating area in their parking lot. There was a DJ playing Latin music, and a booth serving tacos outdoors, and lots of guests enjoyed the beautiful May weather and the festive atmosphere. 

There wasn't enough time for me to sit and eat anything or to order a drink. So I just wandered into the parking lot to soak in the atmosphere on the cheap. I could see many local Troy residents attracted by the music making their way over to the restaurant to enjoy the offerings. 

I live in a suburb. It is a dense suburb, where from my living room, I can just about look into the houses from my neighbors on either side if the angle is just right. The lots in my town are measured in SF, not acres. So it is a small/dense suburb. But it is still a suburb. There are no stoops for people to sit in front, to have a coffee or a glass of wine after dinner. There are just a handful of places you can walk to: a coffee shop, a deli, and a couple of pizza places. Most of the people walking around in my town will not happen on any chance encounters. You may run into your friend/neighbor out for a walk, or running, perhaps. 

There is much value in chance encounters. It enriches your life by offering unplanned, real-time simulations. Maybe you were on your way to the grocery store and chance upon a  new great restaurant. Maybe you work in a certain department in your university or laboratory, and you bump into someone with whom you share no common areas of interest or research, and the conversation opens up new avenues of thought or exploration. Or maybe you just make a new friend or acquaintance from a different walk of life, someone you don't work with or live near. All of these random variables exist in an urban environment that is less common in suburbs or rural areas. 

I am attracted to the unplanned, the random offerings served up in real-time, and the sudden twists and turns that come up. I feel comfortable changing gears mid-walk and find that it is exciting in a way that the predictable, limited variables lifestyle offered up by the suburbs. Living in a free-standing house in a suburb, it is possible to get into your car from your office garage and drive home into your house garage, and not set foot outside anywhere in the public domain. And what chance encounters would your life offer in such a hard dualistic existence, between work and home? It is those minutes walking on city streets that open the door to hopefully pleasant opportunities to step outside the planned daily patterns of life, and I crave such unsolicited stimuli.