Wednesday, May 17, 2017

The trip before the trip

Then: I stalk through a narrow and endless ribbon of chambers, shrouded and stumbling. I clamber over one threshold after another, dragging my bandaged hands along the floorboards, feeling how thickly the dust curls up in waves against my muffled fingertips. Through door after door I squint into the shadows ahead and I watch, but wind does not flap the darkness, light does not tear its dense, hanging banner. My steps fall dead. I strike my forehead on one lintel after another, I push aside endless, identical curtains of cobwebs, I trip over a perfectly-composed, momentum-staggering heap of debris over and over and as I pause to ponder how to compensate for this obstacle, I wonder as well how much farther I must travel to reach the gate.


Now: Thus I labor each day to work my way out of my mind, and out of the experiential catacombs into which my mind hurls my body. If the two major movers in life are will and serendipity, then I cast my fortunes upon serendipity, because my will works relentlessly against me. To the extent that I must rely on my own mental and physical efforts, a cartoonish battle emerges wherein I watch my will battle against itself like a cat hammering nails into its own tail. Meanwhile the meek and befuddled parts of me pray that this monotonous skirmish throws my self into the sights of an existential ACME cannon.


The early stages of this paradigm shift seem to be occurring right now. The fist of circumstance melted right through several walls of my labyrinthine tomb. I am exhilarated and terrified! Escape seems possible. There really is fresh air and sunlight out there. Yet even in the face of sudden, dramatic liberation my will finds ways to recomplicate, and excuses to retreat into the darkness.


You would hardly know from where my focus has been that I am about to embark on a lengthy transatlantic trip. No, minutiae of my past/current life have devoured me until mere days before my departure. Perhaps this will turn out to have been wise? Perhaps excessive? Perhaps there is no moral or practical value and these are simply steps that must be rehearsed to calm down the past self enough that it falls asleep and I can tiptoe away from him to discover something new about myself.


Perhaps there is some serendipity to my inability to leave things in a “good enough” place, because it has kept me from regimenting and quarantining my trip into safe and predictable sterility.


I am haunted by temptations and fears, yet I wish to temper these impulses because I do not, and have not for a while, trusted my impulses. I have cultivated a life of predictability and safety, sterility and death. While I am not exactly looking for trouble during my travels, in a sense that I don’t yet comprehend I am looking for trouble.


I seek surprises, challenges, wonder, excitement. I seek things I don’t have names for yet, because they are beyond the carefully-plotted perimeter of my life experience. I can’t predict the shape of these people, places, feelings, and events, or how colliding with them will alter my shape.


These unknowns terrify and thrill me. I need more of a mess in my life. I want one...I want to be more of a mess, not so buttoned-up, not so safe and calm, not so predictable. I am scared because all of these ideas threaten the current me, and also because I am pretty sure I will have to continue fighting myself to get there.


But I will forge ahead. I need to scratch my head at things, be overcome by childish excitement, wake up tomorrow morning realizing I was careless for a change, the world didn’t collapse as a result, and there is also no way to back out of it. I need to dance at the edge of the road once in a while...and maybe even leap off of it.


I don’t just want to challenge myself: I want to challenge the world, and discover in it the grace and compassion I usually feel is absent. I want to be amazed by help from strangers and fed by the intersection of our experiences. I want to discover the cornucopia that life has been hiding (or that I have been unwittingly hiding from), and share it with those I meet on the road and those following here.


There is so much to be had in life, so much for all of us: I believe this against my own instincts, I hope this in defiance of every regret, I will it despite my own small impulse to hoard my blessings. I wish to climb up out of the tomb and marvel at just how broad and rich and loving and full of wonder the world is in spite of our fears, and I wish to find that this generosity of life can actually heal the pains by which we deprive ourselves and others.


Along the way, I cherish your goodwill and positive thoughts (I will surely need them along the way). While I venture out on my own behalf, I go with a deep desire to return full to bursting. I can’t wait to share what I encounter with all of you.


Blessings,

A

3 comments:

  1. Greetings traveler...You have reached the gate...and exited!
    Journey on. I will be with you, Acorn.

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  2. “There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.” – Charles Dudley Warner

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  3. You are like Baby Groot standing in a stream. As it passes you are growing. Love you

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