Through a Naturist Lens

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.

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?

We have been in Costa Rica a couple of weeks. We have a small condo in a gated community. We are very close to the beach, just two blocks away. We have a small private space behind the condo where typically one would hang clothing out to dry. I have taken to using this space for nude meditation and sunbathing with the blessing of my wife. After all, no one can see over the eight-foot high walls of this small space.

I took this photo above in hopes of somehow turning it into a version of the Vitruvian Man. It is the first full frontal photo I have taken, something that I wouldn’t have thought of in the past. Something is shifting within me. I am becoming more obsessed with finding time to be nude. That obsession is psychological. This is the second year of my retirement and I am still trying to carve out a new way of being and living.

This blog site is part of that new way of being. I realise that by putting this into the world, others whom I don’t know will be seeing it. But more important to me is the fact that I can look at the post as an observer. My psychological nature is always searching for ways to understand myself and others. Daring to see myself “fully” is daunting and revealing. I truly wonder what I will learn and if it even matters. Oh, and by the way, here is the version of the Vitruvian Man that I ended up with using a photo editing program, I call it “The Man in the Moon.”

This is my first “selfie” taken on the southern shore of the Gulf of Mexico. When I went for a solo walk this morning, I was feeling antsy. Our place along the shore is not very private , so other than in the Casa, nudity is a rare event. Even in this instance, because I just didn’t know if I would be seen, I kept my shirt on when I emerged from behind a dune to approach the sea.

Still, I do find time to sit nude in the sunshine, out of view, usually to meditate. I just don’t take photos of these events. One of my special times that has become quite regular, going for walks in the mangrove swamps not far from the casa. Like in the above photo, I walked only wearing a shirt when walking through the laguna. At times, I could have been seen by passing motorists on the one road that led to the small city of Progreso, Yucatan.

Will I become more adventurous and risk being seen without any clothing in the future? I have no problem going without clothing, in fact it is my preferred way of being. I just have issues with feeling safe.

We both got contracts to teach at a university in China following my retirement for the second time this past summer. We have finished the first term of exams and are enjoying a six-week break until the second term starts. The terms have sixteen weeks of classes and the second term always starts after the Chinese New Year. Because I had managed to connect with a Chinese woman called Jenny from Shanghai through an expat group. Jenny is her English business name, not her Chinese name. We were able to rent a condo from her for most of the term break, a condo in the city of Sanya. Now Sanya is considered to be China’s version of Hawaii. And the place is living up to that claim in our opinion.

My time for being nude is limited by me, to time spent on the balcony. There weren’t any nude photos taken by my wife [I don’t take them of myself] so I am only bringing a photo taken where I am nude beneath the dressing gown. I did get to do an evening skinny dip in the South China Sea thus keeping my record for skinny dipping in every suitable location possible. I did, however, get a photo of three youths doing this during the day time.

I took the photo a week ago along with many other beach photos of Chinese people. The strangest thing is that most people were dressed as if it was winter, which technically it is. While my wife and I were strolling the beach in bathing suits, many of the locals were wearing winter jackets. It didn’t make any sense to us since not everyone was dressed for winter.

Once we return to Changzhou and the university, there will be no time or opportunity for nude time. We have a busy schedule with teaching, social interactions, and exploring a whole new world.

This image was taken by my wife, not the first image she has taken of me while I was nude in Cuba during this two week Christmas vacation at an all-inclusive resort in Veradero. My face betrays my mood. I had just been informed that my services as a principal was no longer required as of the end of the current school year. I have more than thirty years service, so it is a signal that it is time for me to retire. Somehow, I don’t feel like retiring.

Cuba. We aren’t staying at a nude resort or a clothing optional resort. However, it is an adults only resort. Almost every evening for the first few days we went skinny dipping into the ocean. And when we were in our small suite, I rarely wore any clothes. This was our first out-of-country holiday on our own not counting a trip to Tampa, Florida in 2001. In 2001 it was all about a trip to Disney World which we had won in a “calendar travel draw.” That trip had no skinny dipping activity.

We had been to Europe five times with school trips. Skinny dipping in the Mediterranean Sea happened in each of those trips in Nice, France once darkness had fallen. Skinny dipping had been a family affair for us as we raised our children. There was rarely a trip to any lake during warm weather than didn’t include swimming nude in the dark. At times, even some of our children’s friends would join in.

Back to this trip to Cuba. This trip is different. There are photos. It was her fault as she took the first photo. I got my revenge and have more photos of her than she has of me. Despite our mutual disappointment about my future, we are making the best of our time here in the Caribbean, including snorkelling and golfing. Yes, we brought our golf clubs with us. We needed this trip.

In case you are wondering, no I am not going to post photos of my wife. This is my story, not hers.