When I took off to this island having kissed my former life good-bye I made up in my mind a list of things I should get.
Things. Not ideas, positions or persons but material things.
The first one on my list was a red car, preferably a two-seater cabriolet. I was-thinking about a Porsche but...-they cost a lot to acquire and to keep. The spare parts are made of precious metals and the nearest mechanic is fifty miles away. I shopped around for BMW's. They do make magnificent pieces of engineering and that's what hit me in the face. I do not want over engineering. I do not want to buy things that are put there just to make you buy more and more, spend extra because of your status sense. The choice got smaller and smaller. Walking in the Mazda shop, I saw it. The Miata: Nothing extra, small, nimble, and reasonable.
I drive around wearing a hat and a smile.
The second thing was an electric guitar. I've been fooling around since I was 14 and never had a guitar that could be properly tuned. I have bought guitars to my family but somehow always skipped myself. Now was the time. I opted for the Fender Strat though a Les Paul would have been closer to my soul which is a shade of blue. The Strat is fantastic. I found the "flow" with it and it is giving me moments of great pleasure and satisfaction.
The third on the list was a decent digital camera. I've been doing photography some 30 years now and I have had cameras of all sorts. Now one has to go digital because ... everybody's going digital! I had a digital ixus and a waterproof Pentax which were sort of OK for notebook type of stuff but if you try to catch something in motion, you miss. The things happen with such a delay that the subject had vanished by the time the whirring and beeping had ended and there was finally a "click".
I got a Canon D 20. I had an EOS 5 before and some lenses so I figured the learning curve would be steepest with a machine from the same family.
It is a marvellous piece of fine mechanics, informatics and what have you.
I cannot understand how much the technology has advanced since the days of my OM-2 or AE-1. Yes, you can still fail your shots. You can even forget your camera home. But the machine is perfect, anything going wrong is the user's choice.
I got all the things on my list.
Am I happy?
Most of the time, yes.
Though I confess that I was about as happy making the list and anticipating.
I am not going philosophical about material things and happiness, what can be bought and what not.
I just make a note that I once again got what I wanted and now I have to want something else or study Zen.
To study Zen is to study detachment, the state of non-being, not-wanting, not-looking...
I see a dilemma here: How can you motivate yourself to not-wanting?
In the state of not-wanting you don't want to motivate, either...
Maybe I am just lazy.
I'll do some funk now...
