Of Cities, and Unfolding Minds

So I’m sitting in the top bunk of a nifty little bed in a hostel room, second floor, first living floor, and typing up a summary of… well. Honestly, I just wanted to write something. I’ve been missing it.

To my left, there’s a lovely view of a rooftop, and a wall. On the rooftop, there’s some kind of dark brown vent-pipe, and, if you lean, a gray lighter, a beer can, assorted seagull feathers and cigarettes and the like. The wall’s got some sort of triangle on it in black spray-paint, and if you lean far enough out, you can see a brick building, maybe four, five stories, and beyond it, sky and skyscrapers. In the hostel room itself, there’s two bunk-beds. Mine’s the top of the one on the far side of the wall, next to the window, and the other one is against the side wall, long from the door. There’s a longish mirror, and four plywood lockers, big enough for a duffle bag, which is all I really need. Oh, and a towel hook. That’s rather important.

My first roommate is an older woman named Kendra who travels the world doing… something. She doesn’t have a home, she says, and seems to enjoy it. My other roommate, who only arrived two nights ago, is a bit younger, maybe a few years older than me, named Kim, from Australia. She’s very cool, seems to spend most of her time traveling. I guess that’s what hostels are for, and when Rebecca finally goes traveling next summer (she’d better, anyway), she will enjoy the company, I think.

I was wondering if there was something wrong with me, as I did not seem to be completely overwhelmed by this city. I was expecting, what with the mountains, and the hills, and the trees, and the fountains, and the architecture (so crazy! so, so crazy!), to be just staring goggle-eyed all about, but somehow it just feels… comfortable. I like this city. I am not overwhelmed, I do not feel like a tiny, insignificant prawn lost in the shuffle of bigger, more important lives. Dwarfed by the mountains, and the trees, yes, but the streets are wide and the skies are big and there is water. I could spend some time here.

…I could spend a lot of time here.

Quite honestly, I would not mind living here for a while. And that is partly the awesome geography, and the topography, and the architecture, and… well, it’s also largely the fact that these streets I have wandered down, I have been wandering down them in very excellent company. A beautiful city is nice, but it is infinitely nicer to have someone who… well. Someone to appreciate it with?

We’ve passed the stage where we both mutter apologies when our hands brush up against each other. I’m rather glad for that. For all the mockery of Those Puritans who freak out about holding hands, it is actually rather a big step for someone who just isn’t a physical contact sort (though hugging? hugging is awesome). And last night we talked about mental illnesses, and minds, and… mine. And I kind of just talked and talked and talked, and told him all (well, summarized) the stuff in my head that I cringe from, and some of the stuff I’ve embraced, and the stuff that’s a blessing and the stuff that’s a curse and the voices of doubt and the voices of hate and the voices I love and the voices I’ve run from and all the things in my past I have bled over and bled myself over and been terrified to face for so, so long and he listened, and commented occasionally, and we walked through rapidly darkening streets and below bright lights very quickly up very steep hills and it was dark and a bit chilly and the breezes and my mind opening up to someone who I’ve known for five years and less than a week, simultaneously, and it felt…

Really, I don’t know.

Maybe that’s okay?

The Untouched, Untouchable, Intangible HORIZON

I had to take the dove feather out of my notebook to paint it.


This is what the back looks like now:

What I'm Looking For

I can’t help but feel that if I just ran the hell away from here, my life would be okay. If I buy a plane ticket tomorrow for Death Valley, and just walk, take nothing with me, just… go. I feel like my life’s been building up to this. I feel like somewhere behind this padlocked skull, there’s momentum building, there’s a coiled spring, waiting to launch me into another life, another reality, I can’t help but realize that it’s probably all a symptom, but at the same time…

What if I did?

Tomorrow. If I got off work tomorrow, bought a plane ticket, and mailed my phone and a letter of thanks and apology to the three people keeping me sane right now, if I disappeared like a puff of smoke into the wind, if I never came back…

I keep trying to work on these stories. They’re all half-finished, they all look bleaker and bleaker the harder I try to fix them. Nothing seems to fit, nothing seems to matter, I can’t think straight and my brain is twisted into knots, nothing fits or works or sounds right and just… I don’t know whether it’s me, or my environment, or just… I don’t know. I haven’t mailed my college application off yet. I don’t know why. I finished it a week ago.

I’m not stupid, or naïve, I like to think. I like to think I’ve washed all the romanticism out of my head with cynicism, and then replaced the cynicism with idealism, and then watered that down with reality and beautifully gray skies. The thing is, it’s a Romantic’s dream, running away. Buying a spontaneous plane ticket to Death Valley? That’s a castle in the air, man. But, oh, God, I want it.

I want to get the hell out of here, to pack my guitar and my laptop and a bunch of notebooks, and just go. And to wander, across deserts, and through old, deserted towns, and bustling cities, and grasslands, and fields, and forests, to just wander, to fast and meditate and find what I’m looking for, to hear more than the voices in my head, to meet people with odd and strange viewpoints, and learn from people who had no teachers, to sing in places where the sky touches the ground, to find the soft places between the worlds, to live.

And someday, I want to stumble back into town, and see my friends again, and share adventures, and hear all about how they took their potential and their grand dreams and spirits and souls and lives and did something amazing, about how they realized all of their dreams, and all of their potential, and how they changed the world, and how they’re big, real, more awesome than ever now, and how they fill the world around them. And I’ll tell them stories about how I saw the eagles freefalling with their talons locked, and I climbed down the Grand Canyon wall, and crossed whitewater rapids on foot, and where I finally met Coyote and here’s the scar I got from where he tricked me into picking up a hot coal, and what it looks like to see the sun set over the Edge of the Very World, and being in places where it rains all the time and where it never rains, and just, just and then… and then I can settle down, maybe, and things will be easier to understand, or maybe I’ll just turn back around and go out again, and and and I don’t even know.

Castles in the air. If you jump for them, you more often than not fall back to Earth and break your spine, but there’s always the off chance you’ll catch onto something on the way.

Whatever is not an expression of apathy, it's the eye of the storm.

To Whom It May Concern, and with all due respect,

My attitude is not defined by the speech-pattern of apathetic dismissal, "Whatever."

My attitude is defined by the final word with which I choose to leave your company, and most people's-- that is to say, "Peace." Which is, in case you didn't know, a shortened form of the full farewell, which is to say, "Peace be with you."

Peace be with you. Peace unto you, and your loved ones, and peace be unto this world, this torn and scarred world, this home of our fragile human race, which is within our power to make a heaven or a hell.

My attitude is in the songs I sing along roads and under echoing bridges and to the open night sky, songs like Sunday Bloody Sunday, songs that fan the flames of my soul, lyrics that grip my heart in a vise. My attitude is in the lines "Where you live should not decide / Whether you live or whether you die" because that is where my passion lies.

I say things like "Whatever," I shrug, I grin and laugh it off often, because my mind is occupied with stories, with dreams, with love and hope and fire and pain and longing, and whether it's the date or the initials that come first on an invoice doesn't even scratch the surface of any of those things. I won't say I couldn't care less, because on some level I do care-- I shrug it off because the mistake's been made, and file away the information for next time. Whether I remember it or not depends on other factors.

Someday, I won't have to walk into a store, pick up an object, and wonder if it was made by hired workers or forced slavery. Someday, enough people will care, enough people will care and think and speak and work, and slavery will be eradicated. Someday, children will stop dying from diseases cured centuries in the past, and people will care as much for the starving continents away as the starving in the slums of the next city over. Someday, this world will cease to be a hell for most of the people in it.

I repeat this to myself at least once a day. I have to. I force myself to believe it as I speak it, to see it in my mind, a world without a hell that could so easily be prevented, because if I start to believe that it won't happen, it hurts, so bad I want to cry.

When I put the earbuds back in my pocket, and I shake the snow or the dust or the rainwater off of my shoes and jacket and walk in, I shake off the passion and fury and sorrow that wars within me, because if I didn't have walls to put it up behind, it would consume me. I'd be impossible to put up with-- more than I already am, that is. But it doesn't go away. Know that. It doesn't go away ever, and I never stop caring, and I am never, ever apathetic. I'm just distant.

Peace, dude.

It feels too cold to walk outside right now. I don’t know why – it’s only seventeen degrees, I’ve walked in colder. Maybe I don’t want it bad enough, maybe I’ve been sitting here, inert, for too long, maybe it doesn’t matter. It’s cold, and I’m lonely, and Mohan hasn’t talked to me in ages and I haven’t talked to him, but I’ve been hearing the kittens, for whatever that’s worth. Ever heard a cat meow from a few feet behind you, looked around, and seen your own cat sleeping peacefully right under your chair? Or vice versa, sometimes. It’s a little unnerving. It helps that the kittens (I know they must be full grown by now, but I still think of them as The Kittens) have a deeper pitch, and aren’t as vibrato in voice.

Walking home from work today, I had this craving for someone I haven’t seen in a while. I wanted to talk to him, hold his hand, walk together and talk and understand him. I wanted company. Want. I want company. I want someone to hug, and I want someone to talk to and care about and kiss in the dark when we’re alone and it’s the magic of the night that lights up your soul and I want adventure and love, and love, and it… just… hurts.

Damn, I’m whiny this fine evening. That’s why I go walk, when things get lonely. I find things to focus on that aren’t life, and it’s a little easier to take. Ah, well. Took some pictures, and now I’m just going to read Sandman and fall asleep. Maybe things will be better in the morning.

Discovery, and a journey with no destination is still a journey worth making.

Well, I started writing something full of self-pity, and anguish or angst, and this torn, hurt, lost feeling that’s been growing inside of me, like a little jagged sword-blade, slowly ripping the hole wider, little by little as the months pass. That’s a better description than listing the reasons and environmental stress, like the first post did. Why I’m here… well, it matters, but that’s not what it’s about, really. It’s about getting out, or at least living with the world I’m in.

The fact is… mostly, I want to leave. I want to take my guitar, my laptop, and my cat, and just go… away. Somewhere. I can’t – I have no car, no money (at least, not enough to get away), little momentum – just the urge to go. But there I am again, complaining. Basically, today I sang a song for a friend, and he seemed to like it, and he showed me a bunch of cool stuff on the guitar and now I’ve got even more to do to take my mind off of all this crap, so… yeah.

I wrote this walking to see a friend, when I stopped to have a drink at Starbucks: “The impossible things we see by the side of the road – ghosts of fallen leaves, shadows left on the pavement, like a footprint; bubbles rising from the solid ground beneath a puddle; your smile, on a bit of jagged glass, there and gone like a sunbeam’s flash;”

Later I made it into a song.

Impossible things
found by the roadside (wayside?)
starlight, trapped in frost,
all crystal, distant,
cold as the fire that sparked it,
bright as a hole in the sky,
impossible, oh, impossible things
glass, soft as a candle,
shifting in the winds
like a sea of cattails,
singing beneath the streetlights,
oh, impossible, oh—
and a smile in your eyes,
brighter than sun and star and hellfire,
like the rhythm in your voice,
oh, those long days
impossible,
impossible things
we find on our journeys,
impossible things
the gems in the coal mine,
rainclouds in the desert,
oh, impossible—
the songs you sing,
the broken wing of a soaring bird
oh, oh, oh…
impossible things, found by the wayside
impossible, ohhh… impossible

I dunno. Maybe it’s crap. I kinda like it, though, and if I can find a good guitar part, I’ll try and make it a song worth singing.

So I’m still here. There’s still roads I haven’t walked, there’s still trees I haven’t climbed, still trails to hike and paths to take and songs to sing and stories to write and so, so many things to discover. I’m tired of going nowhere. Maybe I’m not looking at this the right way. I can whine and cry about still being in this town, this state, this ugly little nowhere and this house all I want, but there’s so much that I haven’t done, it seems useless to just complain. I think I’ll start taking new roads, when I’m not working. Not really Going Somewhere doesn’t mean I have to be going nowhere.

Of snow, forgiveness, new beginnings to eternal cycles.

This night, I walked out into the air, clear and cold, and went to a quiet place, a clearing in a wood, covered in snow and quiet. And I knelt, there, and prayed for forgiveness for all I’ve done this year, all I’ve thought, all I’ve felt, all I’ve said with malice in my heart. There’s a lot of it. I prayed to be forgiven for all that I am, underneath the grin and laughter, all that I am instead of what I could, should be. And I said that this year, I will do better. And I meant it, and still do.

And then I stood beneath the lights, walking away from that quiet place, as snow began to fall from the sky in little, whirling, crystals, and I caught them on my sleeve and marveled at their beauty, their crystalline perfection, and I stood with my head thrown back to the sky and watched a dance older than any can say, a new thing each time it begins, and I laughed, and spun, and caught the sweetest of life’s moments one at a time on my tongue.

This is the same planet as it was yesterday, as it always has been, and this sky is the same as it has been, the stars still shine as they have always, the snow still falls the same way, but this is a new snow, it is a new night, it is a new year and a new life, and I am forgiven, and I will start anew.

Good stuff and questionable stuff and symbolism in newspaper comics.

Last night I wound up staying awake until one in the morning reading Frazz. I would say I’m not sure why (isn’t that standard procedure when you do something like stay up until one in the morning), but I love that comic, and the website changed so you can read back indefinitely (for now; I’m not sure exactly how far back it goes, but 2003 seemed like a good start), which was really fun until my back started getting sore. So my next move, at one in the morning, was to grab my sneakers and coat and take a walk, which was also fun, except that it’s way too light in the sky for a good night walk right now. I can’t wait for winter to hit, an things go properly dark. (Ye-ah, archaic grammar. I think.)

Anyway, I didn’t realize until I got home from the walk around three o’clock that Caulfield’s name (or maybe I realized on the way down the driveway and then forgot?) is Holden Caulfield’s last name. Oh my good golly gosh, symbolism? In a newspaper comic? …well, I like it. I liked Holden, I loved Catcher in the Rye, I like the characters of Caulfield and Frazz, and it was totally worth it to stay up for hours reading. Also, Caulfield reminds me of me at that age; I was constantly, constantly, getting in trouble for reading while I should have (I very nearly put those two words in quotes—shows how much I’ve grown up, ne?) been doing other things, most notably math. …Actually, scratch “that age,” I was getting in trouble for that through senior year.

The walk was good, by the way. Good in the sense that I mostly accomplished what I really wanted to; I walked into the woods, all the way down to the pond. I had to stop and gather my courage a few times, as I really do prefer the dark to a foggy twilight (it was also raining a little tiny bit) which confuses the eyes and twists perception. What I accomplished was to stand there, looking at the water running across the path, barely visible in the half-darkness, and assure myself that I was in hands larger than my own, that no harm would come to me save by a plan devised entirely by those hands, and also that if I couldn’t walk straight out of the woods which I know like the back of my hand and have been haunting on and off for five years in the dark, I would never be able to walk straight into the state forest, which I’ve never even seen, looking for… well, anything, really.

(Hey, let’s hear it for the very-nearly-run-on-sentence!)

So I got home around three o’clock, and was comfortably in bed before I realized I hadn’t prayed yet, and I am trying to do better. I think that’s happened to me every single night for the past week. This life is a lot more fun when you realize that God probably has a sense of humor, and most likely wants us to have one too. C. S. Lewis said something profound about being able to laugh at our own expense, especially knowing the one making the joke has nothing but our best interests at heart; I don’t remember it, but you get the point. I hope.

That’s life, leaving out the darker stuff about falling back into insanity again. I taped a poster over the mirror where my reflection usually is from the computer, to stave off the desire to stab myself in the eyeball. So far, it’s working pretty well. Life is not hopeless!

Camping Journal

(This is the uncut version of what I did for most of the week we were in Mt. Desert Island, camping. I'll post the edited version on Facebook. There's only one real difference, to keep my dad's wrath from pouring onto my head, other than that they're the same. Note to self: Not located in blog folder.)

August 12, 2009; morning

Well, this is day one. Full day one, at least. We got here yesterday afternoon/evening, and set about setting up camp. It’s a pretty small campsite, but not as small as it looked when we first got here; we fit both tents in alright, and the van in the driveway, without too much cramping. Right now Ruth is glaring at me across the picnic table for playing music on this thing (Everybody Always Leaves, by Matthew Ryan). I thought she might like it, but she refuses to give it a chance. It’s a pretty gray day, a little tiny bit of humid chill in the air, but that’s okay. I’m honestly so happy to be here I couldn’t care less what the weather does (within reason, of course). But it’s pretty, and it’s nice enough. We went over to Robin and Bob’s house last night, after dinner (spaghetti; Sheila kind of burned the sauce, for which we can blame the dogs). That was cool, I always know in the back of my mind how much I miss them, but it hits home when we actually get to see them. Hope we get to hang around more this week with them. Last night, we walk into the porch, we’re all standing around exchanging greetings, and I look over to see Peter looking at Aunty Robin with a strange sort of look. She’s like “Got a problem? What’s the matter, Pete?” And I looked down to see that she’s standing on one of his shoelaces (untied, as usual), grinning. He’s like “…Um. You’re… you’re standing on my shoelace…” She’s like “What? What, your shoelace? What’s the matter?” It made me smile.

So the dogwalk here is a tiny little fenced in place, but there’s tons of places to take them, so I’m not worried. (Listening to U2, now.) Dad is making pancakes, Ruth just took out her sketchbook, the dogs have finally settled down a little, RJ is setting the table, Peter is watching me type, Sheila is doing something in the tent. Well, their tent. We’re splitting one tent, and Dad and Sheila are splitting another one. (Hurr hurr hurr) Peter is now angry that I will put this up somewhere. Hurr hurr hurr. I probably won’t leave this on or out much longer, since the sky is so gray and threatening.

Little kids are running past our campground, afraid, because before we had tied up the dogs, Lucky chased some kid off when he walked past. Poor guy was like… three feet tall. He ran and ran, and when we finally got Lucky off, (s?)he started crying, just standing there in the middle of the road, crying. It was pretty bad. But I should wrap this thing up and put my laptop away. Peter wants to look up the location of some torture museum, but I refuse to use WiFi unless absolutely, completely necessary. I did not come to Mt. Desert Island to hang around online, or to look at torture museums. Perhaps after a few days, this weekend, I’ll do a quick Facebook update or something. Otherwise? NO. I refuse to be a technology-addicted symbol of teenage dependence. Ruth, Peter, and RJ fill that gap just fine (they deny this). And for crying out loud, Dad was more concerned about me bringing charging-apparatuses for various electronic devices than I was. But anyway.

So that’s pretty much it. Ruth is sketching something that looks like fur around an eye, the pancakes are (hey, it was a furry eye!) about ready, and I don’t want to run my battery down. More later!

August 13, 2009; afternoon

We just got back from a four/five hour hike. We set out around eleven, got back just now, plus maybe twenty, thirty minutes of waiting while someone gave Sheila a ride back to the car so she could come get us, and then driving. So maybe four and a half hours. It’s a little chilly today, and I forgot to pack a sweatshirt (predictably enough), but still pretty nice out. We’re going to Robin and Bob’s for dinner tonight, but we’ve got two hours to cool our heels and shower first, which is a good thing, because we’re all pretty sweaty and gross. Hiking for four hours will do that to you.
The whole time, I kept wanting to take pictures—literally there is unspeakable beauty in every single direction. But I settled for the especially scenic things. And the mushrooms, of course. Most of the hike I was up ahead of everyone. I’m not sure why; I’d just start walking, normally, and when I looked back I’d be alone. Not sure exactly how that works out, but it was pretty fun. We ate lunch at Valley Summit, and then hiked up to the summit of St. Saveur, and down to Echo Lake cliffs from there. A very nice hike; our original plan was to go along St. Saveur to Mt. Acadia, but in the end it turned out we were a little unprepared for that.

Last night I built a fire, it was cool. Everyone kept building it, I eventually just went to bed. But there’s the sky here. It’s so beautiful! The sky is so black, and there are stars, brighter than you would ever see them at home, everywhere. It’s amazing. I saw a shooting star in a clearing a way down the road, a veritable comet, I swear. It had a thick glowing trail, it was bright… amazing. Then I went to bed. My sleeping bag was damp though.

So it was a good day. I dunno how else to describe it. Beautiful mountain, nice hike, good weather so far. The dogs are dead tired. For that matter, so am I.

August 19, 2009; morning

Wow. So this journal was a good idea in theory, but honestly, I’m camping. Who the hell has time to sit around on a laptop typing in such a beautiful place? Not I, for sure. So, in order of things I remember, what’s been going on:

Last night, we had tacos for dinner. They were actually pretty good. I had guacamole, everyone else had ground beef. Before that, Dad and Sheila went out to Sand Beach, up in the Northeast corner of the island (we are in the Southwest corner), and then to Rubber-Rock Beach, which is actually called something else… but no one remembers it here. We played cards around the campground and stuff; before they left, Peter went with me up the street about a mile, to Ship’s Harbor, which is a cool little path to a muddy shore, which then goes to a rocky shore (infinitely cooler). It was ninety-five degrees out, but for some reason Peter was cold.

That morning/afternoon, Robin and Bob took us out (we are about to eat breakfast, scrambled eggs and bacon; Peter’s idea of setting the table is, quite literally, putting spoons out and then leaving someone else to do the rest. He’s very tired all the time, and we suspect dehydration, which makes pretty good sense.) to pull traps (now I am eating eggs with a spoon. They are good.) and we did a little fishing, too. That was mad fun. I can’t remember the last time I was out on a boat, plus it was pretty cool to watch Robin pulling the traps up. She’s definitely the coolest person I know. And it was just awesome being out on the water. Once you get out of the island a bit, things get really cool, but that’s the way I like it. I put sunscreen on my face, because I’m not always an idiot, but then I rolled my sleeves up to the seam and got my shoulders burned, so sometimes I am.

Also, I finished A Clockwork Orange yesterday. It’s a good book, really it is. Then I started on the Vonnegut short stories, and those are cool too. I think my favorite is the one about Bernie and Big Nick, the mafia guy. (Peter is urging me to eat the rest of the bacon. “You’re on vacation!”)

(We’re taking the dogs for a walk at Little Long Pond, since Carly has finally gotten over her exhaustion from playing with Zach. That dog is so freaking energetic, it’s crazy! But he was tired when I went over the other day, which leads into what we did the day before yesterday…)
So the day before yesterday, everyone wanted to go to the lobster hatchery, but I’ve seen it twice now, once as a little kid and once with Aunty Robin, the time I stayed up here with them for two weeks. I was trying to remember what the deal was last time I was there, and I remembered that foggy morning when I got in a fight with Grandpa (because he is a racist sometimes. I know he'd never act on it, and if he knows a person personally he doesn't judge them at all like that, but it does NOT excuse the kind of things he was saying that day.) and needed to get the hell out of the house before I punched him or something. So I mentioned that, and Dad got pretty pissed at me over that, which I didn’t realize at the time. But I knew I didn’t want to go to the lobster hatchery/museum, so I looked at the map for a good hike, and found Beech Mountain looking pretty good, figuring I’d go up the cliffs, down the West Ridge Trail, and then all the way around Long Pond to Robin and Bob’s house. So I took the sandwich Sheila had made for me the day before, and a cereal bar and a package of peanuts and two water bottles, a trail map (that’s really, really important), the bus schedule (just in case), and my dad dropped me off at the Echo Lake entrance to Beech Cliffs. We kind of had a fight on the way over. Like I said, I had no idea he was so pissed about the slight to his dad. He was. He told me I was hypersensitive to racial and class-like things, and needed to examine myself because he doesn't think my heart is in the right place. I was furious.

But we kind of got over it by the time we got to the cliffs, which was good. So from there, I went down and took a long drink from the water fountain at Echo Lake, and headed up the cliffs. Those were nice, that’s a beautiful trail, if strenuous, and I was panting pretty heavily when I hit the top of that trail, up towards the summit. (I have to hurry this up, I only have an hour of battery left and kind of want this for music on the way home) So I made it from there down to the parking lot, then up a less steep trail to the fire tower at the summit (but forgot to take a picture of the summit sign), and from there I took a bit of a wrong turn and wound up taking the South Ridge Trail. It wasn’t that much longer of a walk, and I still wound up on the shore of Long Pond (different, notably, from Little Long Pond. Robin says “Us Mainers really know how to give names, eh?”), so it wasn’t too bad. The walk around Long Pond was very nice, I wound up drinking a little from the far shore, the one at the base of Beech Mt., mainly because it was so rocky and clear. When I made it around to the pump station at the end of the pond (it really is long, not round; the station is at… the south end, I believe, I was coming from the eastern shore), there were people around, and the water looked muddier. On the western shore, there were people swimming, so I didn’t even think about drinking over there.

At some point, the Long Pond Trail cut up away from the pond, and my original plan was to just skip off the trail and follow the shore of the pond all the way up to the path that goes up to Bob and Robin’s house. So I left the trail, and at first I was worried, and then I noticed things that made me certain that someone, not all that recently, had done this. There was reindeer moss with a boot-print in it, and a few other clues, but nothing really concrete. So I made it down that trail for a while, maybe ten minutes, and I started getting thirstier and thirstier; at this point I’d been walking for a few hours and only had half a bottle of water left, and the pond was all muddy and had lily plants growing there. At some point, it occurred to me that if I cramped up from dehydration on the trail, someone was bound to find me, but if I got stuck out there, there was no guarantee. (this was right about the point at which I stopped taking pictures and concentrated on moving) With that in mind, I beat my way back through the bush to the trail, and on the way became convinced that someone had not quite made a path, per se, along the pond edge, but they’d definitely found a way through. I don’t know if I can say why I was so certain, because like I said, there was no real concrete evidence. But anyway, I made it back to the trail, and took the Long Pond Trail all the way uphill to where it forked with the Great Notch (called the ‘Western Trail’ on the trail map, which threw me for a second).

At that point, I was incredibly thirsty, praying under my breath that I’d make it up to the fire road, had one mouthful of water left, and really starting to worry. I made up my mind that the next people I met, I’d swallow my pride and ask if they had any water to spare. So I did, and a lovely Quebecois couple poured half a bottle of (heavily chlorinated, NOT that I am in any way complaining) water into my empty bottle, and I made it up the Great Notch to the Fire Road on that. I drank the last mouthful of clear water on the Long Pond Fire Road, and had a few swallows of the other stuff left. So I walked up the fire road, and eventually hit Hodgdon (pronounced HOJ-dun) Road, and drank the last of it. From there, it was straight up the road, except for one triangular fork. But I checked the map there, and made it all the way to Bob and Robin’s house, where Robin was outside making dinner. So I stayed there, they gave me water and some potato salad (honestly I think her potato salad is some of the best I’ve had, because usually I’m not a huge potato salad fan; every other one I’ve ever had is overpowering on the mayonnaise) and we talked for a while, and Zach was so tired he pretty much laid around, which was adorable. He kept putting his head in my lap, and it is so soft! Such a cute puppy; he’s only one. Other than that time, I have never seen him not energetic. Visla, they are an awesome breed.

ETA: (what i would've said had i the battery power then, in summary: I told Robin about the fight with my dad, and she said "Bullshit! He is too a racist!" (on my grandpa.) it made me pretty glad that at least i knew i wasn't crazy. when i was showing her my route on the trail map, she pointed out that I could've cut across the shore of Long Pond, and said that she'd actually done that before and I went "Ha! I knew someone'd done that." It made me pretty happy.)

(Just realized I only have twenty minutes of battery left, switched to Power Saver mode, which means ten extra minutes but also that I cannot but hardly see the screen at all. Apologies for spelling errors.)

So they dropped me off at the campsite, and I laid around for a little while, and then everyone else got home, we ate supper, and I went to bed. That concludes… Monday’s adventure. Now, what did we do Sunday?

Ah, right. On Sunday, Bobby took Ruth, Peter, and RJ out fishing. They caught quite a bit of fish, and were proud of themselves. Peter, predictably enough, had some serious trouble taking proper care of his line, but he was very good at filleting the fish later, and when he’d done that, we had them for supper the following night; they smelled, looked, and according to everyone else, tasted like something you’d have in a restaurant, owing partly to my dad’s excellent cooking skills, partly to Peter’s excellent fish-filleting skills, partly to everyone’s fishing skills, and very muchly to Bobby’s fishing-teaching skills and taking them out on the boat. So that was cool, while they were doing that, Dad, Sheila, Robin and I took all three dogs out to a walk around Little Long Pond, which is a nice spot on Rockefeller land, which means dogs can be unleashed and bikers are not allowed. (Lucky hates bikers, and on this island they are often rude, so that’s a good thing.) That was a lot of fun.

So after that, we took the fish to Robin and Bob’s house (which was where Peter filleted them), and only left to take the dogs home to feed (which we forgot to do while at home, but got laundry done and fed them with the food in the dashboard), then went back for hamburgers and hotdogs. (and veggie burgers. and turkey burger, for Robin)

I have to call Robin and let her know we’re set to go walk the dogs, and also I am almost out of batteries. I’ll do the rest of this later.

August 19, 2009; afternoon

It took so long to check e-mail while I was here charging my laptop that I forgot to finish the bloggish entry thing here. Oh well, now we’re going to Rubber-Rock Beach (also called Hunter Beach, which Robin remembered when we asked her on the walk today.)

August 20, 2009; late morning/early afternoon

Well, we just finished packing up, just about ten-thirty. We’re dropping by the dock to pick up lobsters and say goodbye to Robin and Bob. I am terribly sad, and really don’t want to leave. But life goes on, and I know we’ll be back. Soon, I hope.

Very little battery left, so I guess this is the end. Carly’s got her head on my leg; I think she’s as sad to leave as we are. Alas, alack, but life goes on.

Rain, life, it's actually quite simple.

The rain is falling quite prettily now; the drops are so fine they’re almost mist, but it still soaks you if you stand in it long enough. It’s pretty, but it’s not my favorite kind of rain. I love the raging storms, gales that ravage the landscape, leaving leaves strewn across the sidewalk, hurling sheets of water into your face even under an overhang, deafening you with thunder and blinding streaks of lightning across the face of the sky. I feel so alive, with a storm so fierce in my face that they spawn tornados and hail and think nothing of it. It’s a rush of adrenaline; it’s the marrow of life and the core, and the lifeblood of my soul. Even as a child, I feared thunderstorms but was drawn in by them. Logically, I knew they could kill me, burn down the house, anything. But I loved that feeling. It’s something that hasn’t gone away; if anything, that’s grown stronger as I got older. I seek out that feeling now, the rush of life.

When it’s dark, and cold, and the air is thick with swirling snow, I slip out the back door, and only manage to keep my hood up for a few minutes before I need more. I love the silence, the breeze in the icy air, the snow in my hair, the flurry just visible in the orange light here and there, at just the right angle. On days in early winter, when the sleet comes and the ice pounds my windows, I rush out into the biting evening, and chase the twilight through the sidewalks, quiet but for the crackle of frozen leaves and the ongoing rattle of tiny droplets of ice hurtling onto the ground. There’s ice in my hair, and on my coat, and in my eyelashes, and I’m wind-burned by the time I get home, but it’s a good thing.

Someone wrote the newspaper to complain about those punk kids who lurk around at night, and I smiled, seeing their preemptive anger concerning preemptive vandalism, and register with amusement the annoyance at all those stupid fools who come out of the woodwork on summer nights. Yes, teenagers roam in the summer nights. But you haven’t lived until you’ve wandered the streets in the middle of a raging winter storm; when the summer thunderstorms come, it’s best to lie on the ground, or lean on a fence, and let the rain wash your worries away.

It’s a pretty, quiet rain tonight. That’s probably why I’m sitting here, listening to music and typing up a blog entry, instead of curled up against a rock in the park, watching the drops fall.

I have been wandering

I have been wandering, as is my wont, at night, in the dark streets, under the orange streetlights, under the pale stars, the waning moon, down paths that have been mine for so long. Down into the woods I go, when dusk is beginning to scatter in the face of the darkness of night, and I find a place, and I sit, and think, and look, and wonder. In this place, these woods, this pond, I have found sanctuary, I have found reason, I have found peace. I have seen the great birds and the small birds soar, I have heard the song of the bullfrogs like living violins and teeming bass drums, I have seen beaver, and possum, and hawk, and heron. I have gone and watched the night glitter and shine in the light of thousands of fireflies, wherever you look a sparkling light, orange and yellow and green, a little different in each flash, which becomes apparent when they fly past your face, two inches away. I have been lost in the trails when it began to rain, in the dark—that was years ago, I could not be lost there now if I tried. I have found peace, and hope, and despair, and hurt, and love in that place, I have seen snow-covered trees lit by only the moon’s blue light, I have gone to the path for solace and been confronted by my own shadow and more. I have found myself on my knees in the mud, ice touching the bare skin of my legs as I cried aloud in a voice I did not know I had. I have sung, in the dark night, in the pitch between the trees and the dusk in the sky, I have whistled in the day, I have prayed for a thunderstorm, I have reveled in the mist; I have laid flat on my back, and seen the sky, framed by trees, gilt by the sunset, glorious.

Often, I have been convinced that such a place is all I need in this world. It is a place for peace, one of the few in my life. I am still convinced that I could spend the rest of my life wandering the wilderness, at peace, without seeing another office building ever. I am probably not alone in this view.

I do think that peace and restlessness are not incompatible. I think that true peace needs more than tranquility, I think that a balance is necessary. I remember running out of the house, down the driveway, angry and hurt and barefoot in the full moon, and walking far on sidewalks that seemed better than the alternative. I remember crying aloud, punching telephone poles bare-fisted, full force, in the dark, because I did not know where to turn. I remember standing for long, long moments on the street before a church, watching, wondering, wishing, more alone than anything. I remember nights of shadows, masks in the dark behind me, figures that haunted the corners of my eye, impossible, terrifying.

Restlessness is a part of me. Peace is a part of restlessness, something unattainable, something impossibly beautiful, a moment that surprises by being real, after all. Peace cannot be taken, it cannot be bought, it cannot be sought out. Restlessness is a part of me, and peace is a part of restlessness, and this does not strike me as impossible, because life is made up of paradoxes.

A strange and shitty night.

Blood on my mouthpiece, still straining to hit those low notes, usually it’s the high notes that get me but that hasn’t been the case lately, and the lower register is really tough to reach. I’m sick of mellophone, which Microsoft Word corrects as “cellophane,” amusingly enough, and it’s only been two or three weeks now. Three days would be too long. I haven’t played horn in long enough, that’s the problem. I need to get back to caring, back to pouring my soul into the brass. Or at least forcing out a few tunes a night. I’m angry, though, angry and hurt and apathetic and I don’t know where to turn now.

This is a shitty blog post, I am fully aware. I’m in a shitty mood. I’m feeling like a shitty artist, with no vision, and I want to seek meaning but I forgot how to seek. And my hair is shitty, because I haven’t had a chance to wash it in about three days, possibly more. And my eyes are shitty, as usual, except that lately contacts keep falling out of them, and my nails are broken and jagged, and my lips are chapped and split and broken (thus the blood on my mouthpiece) despite the balm I put on them, which is gross and made with honey, and I just want life to be over.

Today, or this evening, I guess, it was well after sunset when I left the library, I took the roundabout way home, and when I passed by the highway there was a man doing something, sending up a huge fountain of yellow-orange sparks, wicked bright all over, and they cast his face into relief, even twenty feet away at the bottom of the bank, maybe further, I could see. And there was a huge white spotlight shining at the scene, it nearly blinded me. I watched the sparks for a while and then a car came, and I shook myself loose and kept walking.

Before that, turning onto that roundabout road, I saw a possum going to cross the road, but I came too close for comfort, and it bolted in the other direction, past the bank sign, into the woods. I say bolted, but it was really more of a rolling lumber.

And now I will go to sleep and hope that nightmares don’t haunt me too long.

Safe enough in the shadows of my mind.

or, "what it's like to be in my head"

There are snowflakes falling, it’s dark and they shine orange-yellow in the streetlight against the dark sky. I crane my head to look, crane my neck to catch them on my tongue. It is a little cool, some might say terribly cold, but the wind in my face makes me feel alive, and I’m actually warm, or at least, comfortable, as long as I keep moving—no one believes me when I tell them that, but it’s true. I prefer cold, I prefer chill, nothing makes me feel alive like ice. Anyway, the snowflakes are falling, and I twirl and stretch to catch them—it doesn’t cross my mind that I look quite the fool, until it does and I reign in my laughter and return my wandering gaze to the sidewalk. But before long I’m caught up in the sidewalk, the pretty crystals, catching the light like a field of diamonds—not like a field of diamonds, though, like a path of snowflakes and ice crystals. Every image is like itself, a little like every other image, but most like itself. That occurs to me, and I smile at the simple complexity of it. Simple complexity, simple complexity, com-plex-it-y, simple, simple plan, it’s a simple plan! Not like the band, though, like a simple plan, they never turn out to be as simple as you first thought, do they?

Sometimes my mind is a scary place to be—imagination isn’t as bright and fuzzy as some people seem to think—but moments like this I wouldn’t want to be anyone else. The beauty of the moment strikes me, the orange streetlights on the ice, the brown of that little clump of snow against the white, the snow on the trees, the cold air like a long drink of life, the moment is beautiful. It’s the night that brings it out in me. I’m never as calm and wild and content and restless as I am walking in the cold at night. It’s why I want to move somewhere far North, where I’ll always have a cold, dark night to walk in.

Back five minutes.

I’m laughing, laughing at the sheer craziness of it all. I know I locked the door, I know I locked it at least once, but I’m still bent on checking on my way home, though it’ll add five minutes to my walk. I remember locking it, but what if that was on the first trip? No, it wouldn’t make sense that I locked it on the first trip, I knew we were making two trips, wouldn’t he have reminded me? No, I definitely locked it. But what if, what if, what if I didn’t? Worst case scenario, someone breaks in and robs the place stone blind. Second worst case, the unlocked door is discovered in the morning and we are both fired; third worst case, I am fired. But this is all folly, because I locked the damn door.

Or did I? I laugh aloud again. Life would be simpler, I remark aloud to the empty air, if I just wasn’t so crazy. Laugh, laugh, it’s all you really can do—I am amused by the futility of my reasoning, amused by the inanity of my situation, amused by the cold and the walk and the idea. And I am walking to the store to check the door, which is, of course, firmly locked when I get there. The snow, which I assumed to be blowing out of the trees, begins to look more like a snowfall, and I laugh because of course it starts snowing as soon as I am resolved to walk the extra distance.

Back another several minutes.

Barnes & Noble is a pretty nice place to sit and read, even if it is cliché and whatnot. This coffee is a little too sweet, but that’s okay. I have a new book, and that makes everything better—it’s one I’ve heard about several times online, but not by name. I recognized the characters when I flipped it open to a random page and started reading. I only know the names, and that one is an angel and the other, a demon, but that’s enough and it’s by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett—do I need any further goads? It’s in my price range, and that was proof enough.

I’m sitting there, sipping the “tall” mocha and popping little balls of chocolate-mint-stuff and laughing to myself at Crowley, barely aware of my surroundings, except for the guy at the table across from mine. We’re facing each other, on opposite sides of our tables. He’s using a laptop, a Mac—we made brief eye-contact when I walked in, and he’s hovering in the back of my mind now. He’s tallish, wearing a white and blue plaid-type shirt, medium-length curly blond hair, and has shadows under his light blue eyes that suggest a lack of sleep all too familiar in this corner of the world, surrounded by bookshelves and quiet regulars who prowl the pages like hawks on the wind. He’s handsome, looks like late twenties, early thirties, and I kind of wish I wasn’t too shy to look up and smile at him. He smiles at me anyway, when I look up, and I smile back. When I get up to throw the coffee away and go, he asks me if I was popping coffee beans and I laugh and explain. I wish, I wish, I wish I could get to know him.

Back about half an hour.

I’m flashing you the peace sign over my shoulder as I take the crosswalk and he drives off. It’s a good night, it’s a good night, I’m laughing more sincerely than it’s been in a while, the deep snowbank that I sink right through doesn’t faze me, it’s a good night for a walk in the clear air and the soft snow. In my ears, it’s “Lemon,” and I ignore the deeper feelings that song pings in my heart and focus on the beat, a good beat to walk to.

Back several minutes.

He’s counting money, careful and generally organized and so on, and I’m leaning up against the counter, distracting him with mindless chatter. Eventually, I run out of words and fall silent, but not for long. I’m never silent for long, when I’m in these moods. It’s kind of a pain. But this was supposed to be the inner monologue, so yeah.

After all this time, I’m used to the store with the lights turned out. It’s not too dark to see, not up front, and I’m wondering if I could juggle if I tried. Of course, the answer is no. I knew that, I’ve known that for a long time, but it’s never stopped me before. As I go to pick up the nail files, I see my friend and boss mark down another number on the sheet and stop. The scenario plays out in my head, I mentally see the tired head-shake, and the exasperated sigh, and start laughing instead. He looks at me, looks like he might ask what I’m laughing over, and then shakes his head and goes back to counting. I grin. The rhythm starts playing in my head, and the inside of the first knuckles of my thumb, forefinger, and middle finger start drumming it out on the counter. It takes me a few moments to realize that he’s stopped counting and is glaring at me, and another moment to figure out why.

“You can stop that any time.”

And so I pull up short again, and turn from the counter. I pull a few bags of seed forward to fill gaps on the shelf. There’s something about the surface, the cool plastic bulging with seeds underneath, that invites drumming, or juggling, but I restrain myself. The intense mental image hits me, of the bag bursting, a force of seed bursting out like an explosion, and I grin, and then start laughing as the picture solidifies. He rolls his eyes; I don’t have to turn around to know that. I grin and turn back, and the inevitable follow-up image is a bullet exploding into the back of my neck, out of my forehead. Or some forehead, anyway. It’s a pretty awkward feeling, the imagined senses it drums up in my skin. I shiver a little bit, and stop thinking to watch him count. He eventually notices that I’ve stopped pacing and looks up, making a strange raised-eyebrow face at me watching him. I grin.

The next image is the little digital computer-register clock shattering. I can see it, fragments of bright turquoise numbers flying, and black glass all around, the little tinkling sound. I snicker again, picturing the fragments embedding themselves in the five and ten pound bags—somehow that amuses me. He shakes his head—I’m a lost cause, but I think we both accepted that a long time ago. At least, I did.

Back an hour or so.

We’re talking U2, both more excited than we’d probably care to admit to anyone else. He’s talking about his life and Bono’s, and I kind of see how the dovetail could be. I wish, I wish, there’s so much he could be. I hope more for him than for me, sometimes. Often, actually. If anyone deserves to make it out of this purgatory, it’s him. What I wouldn’t give to see his name in lights—my name, my name I would see on a PO box in a village somewhere on the edge of the wilderness, but that’s a dream I would do without to see his face on an album. Man, it’s crazy how life pulls us.

I’m trying to unscrew the whatever-it-is; this is a copy-and-paste situation; today, it was a pole and a bolt. He can’t find the right tool, I can’t find it either; the solution is to either leave the task undone, indefinitely or until the tool can be found, or to improvise. He’s for leaving it; I’m trying to patch together a solution with spare parts. He’s pointing out the fallacies in my logic; I’m ignoring him. He’s usually right, but it’s worth it for the sparkling moments in between where whatever half-baked crazy scheme I’ve come up with actually works.

Back another hour in time.

I’m sinking into the snowdrift, laughing because although it’s cold and wet, it still feels fluffy, and it makes me smile. An image flashes across my sight, blood splattered across the white and brown plow-snow in a pattern of bright red, turning dark. I shake my head to clear it and keep walking, smiling still. The images barely even bother me anymore, I turn up the music, it’s Bob Marley and the Wailers, which is nice after something like that. The cars whiz by, and the suggestion passes my mind to leap in front of one, and the sensation of my bones being crushed against a high-speed fender whispers. I ignore it as best as I can and keep walking.

It’s a good day for it, after all.