Livin' La Vida Loca by Bruce Clark

I’ve pretty much lived my entire life like that, the crazy life — with some weaves and wobbles, of course. I’ve been accused of being both too brash and too naïve and with honest hindsight, I can’t disagree. Yet I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I’ve gone forward with the knowledge I have and a willingness to discover; that includes lots of willingness to be wrong.

It’s not what someone would normally consider crazy living. They might consider it witchcraft though. I call it living by positive postulate, and it is kinda-sorta magic. Here’s how it works: you decide that something is, or is to be…, and it IS! Idiotically simple! But when I say, “decide” I don’t mean having some dim thought inside your head; I mean putting your idea out there in the physical universe, for real!

In truth, people (that includes you) do this all the time but usually don’t realize they’re doing it. Don’t believe me? Sometime, just for fun, decide something and include the thought, “Well, why not; what’s the worst that can happen?” Yeah, uh-huh, you’ll find out. That’s how it works.

It’s taken a lot of bravery and time to sort it. I mean, if you have to ask yourself how much control you have over your thoughts…, see what I mean? Fortunately, the process seems to be morally rigged. If you were to wish someone would drop dead, for instance (not that you would ever do that) the postulate automatically gets slotted as a dim thought inside of your head, and that person goes right along living just fine, like it or not.

I first realized I had this ability in 1972. I was living in downtown Toronto above a Chinese grocery and one afternoon when I was alone in the apartment I busied myself by rolling together pieces of Scotch Tape in order to put up some really cool WWII photos that one of my roommates had. Frustrated, I finally let out a deep sigh and thought, “There has to be a better way to do this!

“Thud!” It came from inside the apartment and I thought I was alone. “Is somebody here?” I called out. Silence. So I began searching around the small apartment to see where the noise had come from. One step into the bathroom I looked down to see a large roll of tape on the floor. It hadn’t been there before. When I picked it up I quickly realized that it was a roll of double-faced tape. “Hello!” I called out again. “Is anyone here?” Silence. Weird silence. I looked up to see where it had possibly come from and saw that there was a narrow shelf just above the entry door that had lots of stuff on it. I’d never even noticed the shelf before.

So I went about hanging up the rest of the photos on the wall, much easier with double-faced tape. When one of my roomies came home a while later I told her my fantastic experience, to which she said, “Oh, can you find us a little table to set in the kitchen corner?” Well, that was a reply I didn’t expect.

“Sure,” I said, possibly feeling a bit cocky.

The kitchen was in the back of the apartment and had a back entrance that nobody ever used. So I decided to use it. Once outside and down the rickety old wooden stairs, a fire escape actually, I saw where the Chinese grocery had left their throw-away things, including several clay pots of dead flowers and a small three-legged corner table. I kid you not.

That was more decades ago than I care to admit. But I can admit that I did not go through all of my life with instant magic (THANK GOODNESS!) I’ve had to work and work hard just like anybody else.

Currently I live in comfortable retirement; a loving wife, a wonderful home that is a restored hundred-and-twenty year-old brick Grange Hall with all the modern conveniences, no debt, lots of good friends all over the world and in our small local community located in the central desert plateau of Washington state. Not some castle in the sky or a million dollar rooftop condo atop a towering skyscraper, but living just like I want it to be. I decided what it was to be. And it is. Crazy, huh!

~*~

Bruce at the Willow Tea Room in Glasgow, Scotland

Bruce Clark was born and raised in rural north-central Indiana towns.

An insatiable autodidact polymath, he has traveled extensively and lived in several US states as well as Canada and Denmark. He is currently retired and happily married to his third wife, Catherine; no living children of his own. They live in a 120+ year-old brick store building in the desert plateau town of Waterville, in central Washington state.