It’s been a very long time since I have written here.
Many things have changed and I will not go into them now.
I have stopped climbing, and sold my rocking climbing gear
out of necessity.
I’m barely getting by financially, but I am getting by.
I live in California now, and I’m living “temporarily” in a
small room attached to a garage.
It would make a perfect writer’s hovel. The only factor that
prevents it from being such a thing is my reticence to write. Therefore, it’s
just an ordinary hovel, and not the much more romantic sounding writer’s hovel.
I’ve looked for employment—which says a lot about how my
attitudes and philosophies have changed in itself—yet I have not been offered
any gainful employment.
No longer do I frequent the beach daily, as I had when I was
living and abiding in that magical, slightly dystopian place. In fact, I hardly
go to the beach at all, any more.
World travel calls my name, but a pauper am I, and I cannot
decide my course. The piece below I wrote as I imagined I might write many
pieces were I to travel and respond to the inspiration I can sense palpably
waiting for me.
To travel is to be inspired, and I recall fondly the first
days I lived in the Creek or the Valley and how I was so willing to overlook
the difficulties of my situation and be inspired by the grandeur.
Yet, I know that I have a tendency to recall fondly events
and times that others will recall my complaining, so maybe I have a
rose-colored past-view mirror (to mix some metaphors).
I’m dating a woman named Saya (rhymes with Maya), and that’s
the glue that holds this disparate way of living together. Without her as a
focal point, I’m sure I would have scattered with the wind on the path of least
resistance.
So, I’m striving, and I’m now trying to be more forthright
in directing my course, but it’s difficult. It’s a challenge to remain honest
to myself about my true intentions for life and to be honest about where I am
and whether it’s propelling me toward where I want to be.
Were I to Travel
I am among a step farming ruin preserved in the mountains in
some south American country, Peru, perhaps. I am sitting in the corner of a
room unused for millennia. I face the wall and place my palm against the cool
stone. Walls are barriers, inhibitors. But I am more than just feeling this
wall. This wall is conducting, uniting. I am reaching back, back through time,
touching humanity, touching the work of a man, woman, or child who knew a
different world.
This world is not static. This world changes. I am the
traveler. I am the observer. I am the privileged one. They, the workers. They are
the ones that live. They do not travel. They live and survive and make do, and though
they do not have my wealth, they have the earth as a healthy mother. It
provides for them, houses them, and nurses them into health with its bounty.
The earth is their healer.
The earth I know is sick. I can feel the air sting my lungs
when it’s overcast and humid—I guess that all the exhaust gets trapped under
the clouds and becomes concentrated. I feel the air take health from my lungs.
All it leaves in its place is discomfort, unease.
I have come from the site of infection, and I have brought
some of the disease with me. I have ridden in the virus, as it flies the grey
skies.
So I sit, and I reach back, and I ask, “oh brother, what
would you have us do? What would you have done, were you me?” I long to
converse with humanity, to hear its words spoken in one voice, loud and clear.
I long to commune with the spirit of my kind, to ask it, “why do we go on
living in the ways for which we did not bargain? Why do we remain as we were, and
change so little?” It has taken so many small changes over time to bring about
any great change. Where does one man’s capacity to have an epiphany and reverse
his course go, when he is viewed in the larger context of humanity?
It is of no matter that I ask these things of my brother, for
he will not reach back and touch me. His voice is mute. He has only left a
testament to what he valued, and maybe that is not so different from what we
value today, if I can be said to be part of “We” and we all value the same
thing.
Even yet I wonder, would my brother have worked until he
died, loved until there was no light, and stayed with those who bore him into
his plight? I think that he might.
But if that is he, then who am I? Am I the same? Have I
stayed with my family, gone where I should go, on the road paved by those I
know? I would want to think I haven’t, but I might admit that I have. I think I
have, but I’ve tried so hard to stray afield from the path that is easy and
straight. I long for the winding road, the revealing path, the one that—through
virtue of mystery—has so much more to offer through the power of revelation.
I long to round a bend in my path and to be shocked, elated,
dumbstruck—by what I find, see, hear. That is my way of living. Am I addicted
to cheap tricks? Am I the one who must find the least sure path, to declare my
intention to not go down on the ship of steady dreams, common goals and
expected outcomes?
By living this unsure life, am I able to strive for
something great, even though I may not achieve it, something that I could not
do in the ordinary life that is found on that long straight road?
