I go about life being the way I am always already being: I am always already being Niland.

I am Niland-ing the moment I wake up and when I close my eyes in bed at night. There’s no moral judgment implied. Niland-ing is neither good nor bad. It’s what is, as the way I am always already being.

The idea here for me is to recognize Niland-ing for what it is, to accept it, and also to accept there may be another way of being that creates a future that isn’t predicated on being this always already Niland; isn’t predicated on the way I wound up being.

This opens up a world of possibility.

Internalizing the act of Niland-ing means recognizing, and accepting, that everyone else is going about their lives being the way they always already are being.

What if everyone could drop their always already way of being, and open up to the possibility that their way of being might be a limitation, a barrier to the actualization of potential? Of being truly free to be, free to act?

Being Niland for sixty-eight years has been a comfort, and a burden. Carrying the weight of Niland has been a heavy load. Time to give it up.

Being Niland didn’t work with my wife being herself. (Of course I would go here.)

She was always already herself. She couldn’t be anyone other than the woman she wound up being. She couldn’t imagine a way of being that wasn’t always already who she was. And that woman was a totalitarian state: rigid, inflexible, unbending in what she called her clarity of vision.

Time to give THAT up, too. She’s on her own, as she wanted to be.

The wide open opportunity, the mystery, is discovering who the Niland is who isn’t the Niland who wound up being Niland: the already always Niland. We know that guy. The man we don’t know, yet, is the Niland who’s free to be, free to act. That Niland can’t be figured out from the Niland who’s typing these words now. There’s no future here.

It’s late in the day to be creating a future that hasn’t existed. Better late than never. The future is always possible.

Against my wishes, against my desires, my wife has given me this opportunity to create a future that hasn’t existed before. I don’t thank her for it, but I recognize its occurrence in my life. It’s what’s happened.

It seems I will have to see her in December. I will not sacrifice my own pleasures, my last commitments, because of some Niland-ing emotions causing me to be fearful of seeing her. She is just herself, being herself.

A person I once knew.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Tennyson was twenty-four when he wrote his famous poem about the aged Ulysses. He foresaw the old man he became, as famed as his hero, and projected the end as he was just beginning.

All times I have enjoy’d

Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when

Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vext the dim sea

I am no Ulysses; I am no Tennyson. I am only a man who perhaps like them cannot rest from travel. It seems that’s what I do; it’s what I’ve done…with those that loved me, for a while, and many seas vexed.

I can list the moorings, the stopovers: Pittsburgh, Maine, Dublin, New York, Barcelona, Singapore, Melbourne, Paris, Tokyo, back to New York, San Francisco. And now Boston soon.

I have not become a name. I am only another Bozo on the Bus, as my friend Greg likes to say. Yet…

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’

Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades

For ever and forever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!

My margins do fade forever, margins that separate the chapters of my life, one following another—too frequently it sometimes feels.

A new chapter is soon beginning: I hadn’t expected it; I hadn’t wanted it. I resisted it when I thought there was a kernel of hope that the old chapter could continue. Someone else decided it was over.

Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things

I’m looking forward to that bringer of new things. Age doesn’t diminish the quest for new. Perhaps it even enhances that desire, speeds it up. There is less time left to enjoy all the new things that may come my way. The end is closer than the beginning.

I wish my wife hadn’t ended our marriage. I feel pathetic writing that, given all I experienced, what I sacrificed, how my life’s been changed. It would have been a grander plan to enjoy new things together. But little remained, and in the end nothing remained.

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

I do yearn in desire. Last night at dinner Adam asked me if I wanted a new relationship in my life. I’m unsure. I do yearn for the warmth of touch, of intimacy. It wasn’t there anymore before. Desire was removed in my marriage. Yet, to risk love again is to open myself to potentially much joy and potentially much pain. They seem to come in equal measure, for me.

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

My Ayurvedic horoscope foretells spirituality and service to others as my next phase, beginning January, when I move East. I like that, and whether it’s a prediction or a wish, it doesn’t matter: some work of noble note. It’s a lodestar.

Come, my friends,

‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

I’m sailing to sunrise—maybe a more appropriate destination. I love that my college’s symbol is the sun: Bowdoin sitting on the coast of Maine being the first college the sun’s rays touch each morning. It’s a warming, heartening thought. Despite the cold and snow and dark Novembers, Massachusetts will suit me. I feel it. It’s a return to where I’ve been happy.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

The journey out continues. May the gulfs recede. May I reach the Happy Isles.

I’ve discovered that hands are remarkably sensitive. The dexterity I’ve taken for granted is controlled by a complex network of muscles and nerves that interact with the grace and beauty of Baryshnikov.

I’ve discovered this the hard way. On July 24^th I underwent hand surgery on my left hand little finger to correct the tendon tightening disorder called Dupuytrens Contracture. The condition mostly affects men over fifty of Northern European ancestry. Its nickname is Viking Syndrome. [And Niland is a Norse Gaelic name! I guess it was inevitable.]

Hands, like sight, and hearing, and smell, connect us to the world. Hands in so many ways are the most sensual of our senses. We sense hot and cold through touching. Hard or soft. Prickly or smooth.

The sense of touch is the first sensory system to develop in the womb and is likely the most mature at birth.

A man’s hands are more sensitive than his penis. A man loves with his hands. What a man touches he knows.

My surgery was largely successful. Now six weeks out I can move and bend a mostly straightened finger. However, the surgery, and the three weeks of wearing a splint and dressing that immobilized all fingers but the thumb on my left hand, have left my hand with nerve damage that causes pain to my thumb and pointer finger, hand tingling and numbness, and numbness to my entire arm if rested on any surface including being in bed.

I’m on my third support brace to help correct the condition, which hasn’t yet improved very much.

This morning I saw my physical therapist who’s ordered a nerve conduction test to determine whether the tingling numbness is related to my carpal tunnel nerves.  Maybe, maybe not, since my entire arm goes numb when pressured.

What I’ve learned is appreciation for my hands. In Werner Erhard parlance, I’m “out here” with my hands…deep scrutiny of their appearance, sensations, how they bend and stretch, the tightness of my left hand finger muscles, what it feels like to touch different surfaces, hot or cold, my own body. My left hand touch, now, feels entirely different from my right hand, like two different people. My skin feels different to my left hand than it does to my right hand. All those little muscles and nerves playing different right and left hand roles.

I want my left hand returned, back to being synchronous with its mate, and with my whole body: a unified whole of being. Time–and all those hand exercises–is the healer.

Paul Cadmus Tutt’Art@

Sunday

September 1^st.

Today I left one life and began a journey to a new life.  Today I left my married life with my wife, a marriage that in truth ended on February 9^th when she declared her intention to dissolve our marriage.  Today I moved out of her house.  I will never return.

The warmth of friendships eased the transition.  My friends Barry and Pauline transported my temporary belongings and me across the Bay to Oakland.  My friends Robin and Ken have, with great generosity, lent me their house on Helen Street for four months.  My friends Jeff and Kerri, and their boys Oliver and Cedar, wrapped me in hugs as I left the house.  David called from Mystic, CT to make sure his Dad was doing OK.  Ray called to wish me well on the new path.

The day began, as yesterday, too, with a five-hour live Zoom webinar with Werner Erhard, as part of the Being a Leader/Creating Course Leaders training program.  All participants felt the immense privilege of directly engaging with Werner—at 83, older and wiser.

My dialogue with Werner was about the transition I was making this very day, the end of my marriage and the beginning of new life possibility.  Werner talked about sadness as a fundamental human expression, and the power of poignant sadness to heal the pain of loss.

The quiet of being on my own again also has healing power.  Being within myself, without the causal conversation usual within a marriage, takes getting used to again.  The introspection will be beneficial. I must use this time alone wisely.

I have ahead of me the possibility to create a life that hadn’t existed before.  I cannot repeat the past, the old dependencies that I thought were life sustaining but were instead life constraining: constraints from being free to act, free to be.  Free to live life.  No one shackled me.  I invented these constraints myself, so can free myself, too.

The world has given me this opportunity.  It’s an opportunity to show up and be accountable, be authentic, be myself.  Werner said, “You can’t have a life if you get stuck in trying to figure out the meaning of life, the meaning of your life.”  It’s inherently meaningless.

It begins today.