Through a Naturist Lens

I get up early. It’s not by choice as it means by the evening I am tired. A late night usually means a ten or ten-thirty bedtime. Not many weeks ago, it was already daytime rather than not even a hint of an approaching dawn. I am a genuine morning person. Assuming that every day begins in darkness, at least by the calendar and the clock, and ends in darkness, there is no way to avoid darkness in our lives.

Okay, this is sounding like some sort of excuse to talk about psychology. You should be warned, I have this tendency to bring in psychological themes here. I actually can’t help it. It is part of my introverted nature and my background and training as a psychotherapist.

My wife is still sleeping, at least for a little longer. When she gets up, we will sit by our fireplace with our drapes wide open in the background. With coffee in hand, we talk together before sitting silently and sipping freshly ground coffee. It’s our morning ritual when the morning temperature is below ten degrees Celsius. It’s four degrees outside in case you are wondering. Remember, Canada is the true North, strong and free – at least for now.

We have problems. We have fascists in our own house. You know, the people who want to desperately control others. Oh, just in case you didn’t know, I could be labelled as anti-fascist [antifa]. Yes, I am also a naturist as well. You see, being antifa also means believing in freedom to be who you are and empathetic. I can choose to wear clothing or not when it is good for me and those around me. That is an important distinction. Freedom isn’t just about me doing or saying what I want, when I want.

My next-door neighbour to the east has a young family. The family is a recent addition to the neighbourhood. They are good people, and friendly people as well. With a nine-year-old daughter and a year old set of twins, there is no desire on my part to risk them remaining good neighbours. So, I choose my time and place for nudity accordingly. I think you get the picture.

On another topic, I have put up a few more of my early posts, dated with their original dates for publishing. Check them out. I wrote four posts that survived, while in Costa Rica in 2010.

1. https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/playa-jaco-costa-rica/
2. https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/cooking-in-costa-rica/
3. https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/red-man-in-playa-jaco/
4. https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/the-thinker-in-costa-rica/

Please leave a comment for each post, if you could. It helps me know if they have been read.

It makes it tough to be nude outdoors when the temperatures drop significantly. It is what it is, there’s no way to undo the weather. The only real option is to put clothing back on, or find a different place, a warmer place where being clothing free will have a reasonable chance of happening. Luckily, we have a place where we stay for winter months in Mexico. Our plane tickets have been purchased and all that remains is to wait.

I am slowly rebuilding this site and now have a few of my earliest posts published here:

1. First post from December 2004 when we were in Cuba – https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/christmas-holiday-in-cuba/
2. Second post from February 2007 in Sanya, China – https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/sanya-china-winter-break/
3. Third post from March 2009 in Yucatan, Mexico – https://rglongpre.ca/naturism/yucatan-mexico-2009/

As I rebuild, I will include links for you, the reader, so you can check them out. In the process, some of my old posts will likely be ignored as being boring. As well, nudity will be mostly implied rather than ‘in your face.’ Today’s image is a good example. Why? Well, this site will be easily discoverable by many people in my life, most of whom [not all] know I have a tendency to not wear clothing when it’s possible. None are naturists as far as I know.

And yes, even our youngest grandchildren 6 and 8, are aware as they have frequently seen the images on the wall above our bed.

Those images were taken in Cuba in 2004. They are discrete, suitable for general viewing. The door to our bedroom is never closed making them viewable by anyone in the house, including visitors who pass by the door on the way to the bathroom. Because of keeping nudity somewhat ‘safe,’ there has been no community or extended family backlash. I know who I am, as do they. And that is all that matters.

I have given up my account with a Canadian webhosting company in favour of hosting my own site. The primary reason was simply a matter of cost. I was able, with help from my son-in-law, to set up a server on my old Dell laptop. And now, I am able to do the same as before, only for free. It’s a win in my opinion.

The only problem is that I will have to recreate the archives as they no longer exist in a form I can export to this new site. Why, I have no idea. I blame it on WordPress.Com. With that said, I beg you to have patience as I slowly go forward with the resurrection of this site.

I am in Brampton. I get to sleep downstairs in my son’s house, a space almost like a private suite. I have been bonding with my grandson who is almost two years old while his parents are at work during the day. There is nothing else on my agenda other than a planned visit with a Jungian psychiatrist friend who will be in Toronto in a few days. My son will be going with me for this visit. He has the car and knows how to navigate the roads to where I will be meeting with Michael, an American psychiatrist who is well-versed in Jungian psychology.

Since my little grandson is not well, he has been taking frequent naps during the day. With his parents at work, I have been spending most of my time alone not wearing clothes. This image, unplanned, somehow came into existence. Why? Why show more than is needed? Why even take the risk?

While waiting for my wife to arrive, I am finding that I am missing her. It is as though there is a hole in my life. I have become very, very quiet. And it is that quietness that has me again vulnerable to the shadows.

We are back in our home in China. We have lived in the same 150 square metre apartment since our first year here in 2006-2007. Well, it is almost the same. The first two years we lived in an identical apartment across the hall on the same floor. As a result, it feels like home. Last year we had purchased paintings for the living room wall, as well as other Chinese hangings which decorate the rest of our split-level home. We have separate offices on the bottom level with the kitchen and dining room on the upper level. Our bedroom and the living room are in between.

I am not sure why I needed to explain this, but if I am going to keep writing here, it might give some idea to whomever reads this about the setting for whatever comes next. I don’t know what will come next, but it looks as though I will be risking all in telling the world what will emerge. My intuition knows something is stirring and it will be a rough journey ahead.

It’s been weeks since my last post here. A lot of that time was about being busy as we have travelled to the homes of our children and they have travelled to see us at our home as well since we will be returning to China before the end of the month. Before we fly off, we will visit our son and his family in Toronto. I am heading there in a week as I will be babysitting our little grandson who is not feeling well. My wife will come closer to the end of the month.

Being active in the outer world has kept the shadows at a safe distance. There is nothing like a good distraction to avoid thinking too much. Today, I headed once again to the hills for a final farewell to the site of my summer healing. It is my hope that all will be settled enough to allow me to enjoy another year of teaching in China.

I thought that I would have ended this post with that last sentence. But I took another look at the image I had chosen [I took three earlier this afternoon] and I knew I had to say something more. It is about the fiction of separation. I was standing on one side of the barbed wire fence as though the fence separated two places. I knew that both sides of the fence were the same. The same could be said for my inner world and outer world.

As much as I would like to build a solid wall between my awareness, my consciousness and the unconscious dimension, my shadow, it just can’t be done. And that is what worries me.

The SoFoBoMo [Solo Photo Book Month] book is finished. I had until July 30th to finish it, but it didn’t take me thirty days since the photos were easy to find and the topic of individuation is one that I know well because of my background in psychology. I didn’t take any photos of myself nude while working on the project. In fact, I avoided being nude as much as possible as I didn’t want to deal with nudity, and the drama with me being nude, at all.

Somehow, once the book was finished, I found myself with too much time on my hands and my wife sent me out to the hills. She knew that the sunshine and nudity had become my therapy. As long as the nudity didn’t intrude into her life, there was no issue. So, I went out to the hills two days ago and then again early this afternoon. Today is my birthday. I turned sixty-two.

I want to add a bit here from my book, the part where I talked about being in the second half of life. There is no question that I am well into the second half of my life, likely into the final quarter of my life.

“Our outer world lives seem to lose meaning. We find ourselves wondering about our relationships, our careers, our purpose in life. We look at those with whom we have filled our lives and wonder at how they have become strangers. We struggle with our careers wondering what we ever saw in them as now, they leave us feeling hollow. We even question our selves. Who am I?“

It’s the last day of March and we have only a few days left here in Costa Rica. We are talking about going back to China to teach as we both are having trouble filling in our hours and days. We won’t be making the decision until later this spring or early summer.

I got this photo yesterday and as with some of my past images, I did some photo editing to make it softer and fuzzier. Despite that, my depression is still evident. I somehow think I need a break from being here and posting. I have been thinking of deleting the blog site but I have a sense that it would be a mistake.

Since we will soon be home, I hope that life will keep me busy enough so that I don’t think too much. Here, just as the photo indicates, I think too much. I will leave everything here as it is in hopes that I will be well enough

I am definitely turning red, not the same red as one gets from a sunburn, but a rich red-brown colour, and it pleases me. I am almost matching the colour of the private sunning space accessed from our bedroom. I can’t believe that it is already March. In a way, that is a depressing thought as it means that we will be returning to winter in Saskatchewan and the Canadian prairies. I am surprised at how much easier it is to post a photo such as this considering that this is really something new for me.

I have been enjoying Playa Jaco. As with Cuba and Mexico, I have been able to get in some skinny dipping in the ocean once evening darkness appears. Lately, I have been able to do the same in the daytime during high tide when a creek emptying into the north end of the beach becomes deep enough to hide me when I slip off my bathing suit.

We have been on several trips that have taken us to see an active volcano, crocodiles in a river, wild tropical birds, a butterfly refuge, and to do some snorkelling. We have decided that we won’t be returning to Costa Rica as there are too many other tropical places to see. We aren’t old enough to settle down in one winter place as snowbirds. Where we will go next is yet to be decided, With that decision made, we are seeing as much of this country as we can.

I went outside of the compound for a mid-afternoon walk earlier today, a solo expedition. I wanted a specific kind of image that I could use to write up a series of posts on Alchemy for my Jungian Lens blog site, a place that I had been posting to quite regularly for more than a year. However, I hadn’t thought it would be an image of me nude. When I saw this location which was quite surrounded by brush, I took advantage of it to take a photo with me nude.

There was no way that I could use the image as it was as it was obviously just another photo of a naked man. I had to use the image four times to create a visual to represent the four principal stages of alchemy. Working with a photo editor, this is one of the four versions I came up with. I don’t want to go into alchemy here, as that is what the Jungian psychology blog site is all about. This place is about me.

There is no doubt that my nudity is an act of healing, something I am calling skyclad therapy. I feel how the exposure to sunshine is helping me cope with the shadows deep within me, shadows that have been growing since my first round of psychoanalysis in 1998. In a way, I am living an alchemy experiment. I am being baked, cooked in the Costa Rican sunshine. I wonder if I will be reborn out of the ashes like a phoenix?