Today I got the spelling of ‘Wednesday’ mixed up. I was thinking of ‘witness day’ which is what a teacher of English told us back in the 1960-ties at Toronto’s Harbord Collegiate’s evening classes. In doing so I ended up with ‘ss’ and from there on I was confused until the spell checker put me right again!

It makes me appreciate the many things I was able to do in my life so naturally, without even a second thought …

Recall diminishes as I get older; it is less sharp and less assured of ‘itself’ as it were. It is an interesting process and I say to myself I am learning to grow old like I learned to grow up eighty and less years ago. It makes me appreciate the many things I was able to do in my life so naturally, without even a second thought, such as hopping down stairs with both hand carrying stuff! Now a railing has to be close by!

Yesterday was shopping day at Safeway’s, where I get the bulk of my groceries. I get 15% off, but no gas coupons this time. The one thing I get on my first of two trips is the Globe and Mail and Dad’s cookies, which are set to be discontinued I read! What to do? There just is no substitute! Then I remind myself that I never had them that often years ago!

In the evening I down loaded a number of utilities such as Audacity, Filezilla and Notes++. I did not get anywhere with Adobe. Its website is like a fortress without a mailbox to leave a message. I find Adobe’s Photo Elements very complicated with too many changes as you go from one version to the next. I started with them back in 2001 and remember working with versions 3, 5, 6 and now 11. That last version too is long gone, but I don’t really want the current version, which will be different again.

The shiny red light is a malfunction that was overlooked by the installer. Its capacitor is not letting go of its charge and hence it keeps shining. I’ll try to put in a memory stick to get it to make the green shine and then remove it, hoping that the red light may let go of that charge.
<9:07am.

This morning early and also yesterday I have been thinking about putting my spiritual and material affairs in order. Especially this morning I realised that at my age of eighty and one I have to teach myself to round out my life philosophy and let go of many much valued items.

I will not be adding much to my view of human existence and need to round off its formation process. On the material side, it is time so realise that even the most treasured books spend most of their time on my bookcase shelves.
As I give this some much needed attention, I also feel that it will be a relieve to me to begin this process of letting go and have a liberating effect, releasing new energy to go forward.

My upcoming talk in November, titled ‘Some Wisdoms of My Own’ will become the beginning of my spiritual rounding off process.

My upcoming talk in November, titled ‘Some Wisdoms of My Own’ will become the beginning of my spiritual rounding off process. The beginning of its material counterpart is the letting go of my Compaq Presario laptop computer.

I bought is off Tom Wright back in July 1999, when he decided to back to Canada and the USofA. He bought it in 1998 while we were looking at computers in Chinook East Computer City store.

I have beside me the little cheerful greeting card with which I decorated that laptop’s sombre black lid. This card’s inside message reads: “Peace, Beauty, Harmony”, a message that was a meaningful reminder to me in the years I kept this computer with me.

I recorded by hand the main events of my retirement journey that started in the end of May 1999 in Krimpen on the Yssel and continued on with Capelle, Apeldoorn all in the Netherlands. This was followed by Berlin Germany for the month of August and then back to Apeldoorn with my sister Els and her late husband Olt.

There I stayed until November moving into my rented house 106? Yssel Singel in Rheden and remaining through June and then left for Calgary from Zwolle where my friend Hiltje lived. There I returned In September 2000 and lived till June 2001, to return to Calgary again that month.

In late September I returned again to Holland staying with Hiltje in Zwolle, but with the intent of living in my old hometown Zeist. I had lived there with my parents until my emigration on August 10 1959 per KLM to Montreal and then Toronto. This time I aimed to live in Zeist, now as an independent adult and did from November 2001 till October 2003 when I returned to Calgary ‘for good‘ as my sister Tieneke wrote on my going away card, with a question mark! And for good it turned out to be!

I can see now that I was rounding out and revisiting my decision to emigrate going back to 1959.

All this is associated with that computer and its little square greeting card which stayed close and travelled with me all that time of what a call my ‘Dutch Sojourn’.

I can see now that I was rounding out and revisiting my decision to emigrate going back to 1959. And I did come close to staying in my [ 9:55am going for coffee with John] Old Country! What brought me back to Canada was the wedding of John and Tammy in July 2003. All my acquaintances and family in Holland told me that I just had to go and be present. The other reason was that I had known from the 2002/3 New Year’s Eve on that 2003 was to be a year of decision. Yet, what decision was not clear at that time.

This brings me back to the present, because in it too I know that change is coming and needed in my life. It is the letting go of what has occupied for all the years since 2003. This is needed to make room for what I see as completing my life time journey. I aim to formulation the meaning of human existence, as based on my experience, studies and insights. To make room for this I need to let go of past things, which are now starting to hold me back through the emotional ties of nostalgia and the Cyrene calls of dreams yet to be fulfilled!

I need to let go of the old to make room for the new.
<1:57pm after coffee with John, lunch, paper and snooze and after editing now 2:37pm.