What am I talking about?

When one is on the road, one lives a certain way. There is an expectation to each day, it dawns full of promise, one has a plan or schedule (or maybe no plan and no schedule!) or at least the outline of possibility. One makes demands from one’s day. “I will have fun today!” one says to one’s day. There’s an expectation of seeing people, doing something outgoing and entertaining, eating at restaurants one chooses and likes. There is a vacation/holiday atmosphere, by definition. Even when alone, I’ve been playing cards or seeing baseball games or camping, and when with friends there’s all the trappings of seeing old friends and hanging out. Even if one just hangs out all day, a day with friends is a special time. The point is that every day becomes special and savored on a trip.

But the larger point of living this way ought be the realization that it is not the trip that makes it so. It is merely that this is what we come to expect from living on a roadtrip. (Or I do, at least. It must be noted that some people don’t travel much and others get super-stressed and crazy whenever they do and so don’t actually enjoy it or let go.) One builds in Waffle House visits or even gets the thrill of Frosted Flakes being available as part of the free hotel continental breakfast (an old trip tradition for me that still makes me feel eight years old and excited about the world again). And suddenly one is atop the world, able to control one’s destiny and steer a course, even in the wake of heartache and homesickness. There is something about the coverage of land and the unknowns of a day that portends excitement that courses with energy through one’s veins. This surely must have been what drove the wagon trains west, the migrants of any era across their respective seas, the oldest of our ancestors out of our first primal valley.

But again, it need not only be so when on the road. It is easy on the road, intuitive, the very nature of being away from a daily routine dictates the thrills and elation and hope. But the challenge of life after a roadtrip is to build as much of that energy as possible into regular daily life. Which arguably is a challenge to not live anything that could be labeled as a “regular daily life”. Which is not to say that one can’t have a schedule or a routine or a day job, but merely that each day at home can be viewed the same way as a day on the road. Time is what we’re given and some of us may feel like there’s too much of it (okay, maybe that’s just me). But time is also an opportunity and there’s no difference between the me who feels all this possibility out here in Kansas or Colorado or Mississippi or whatever and the me who feels stuck in Jersey, or indeed whenever I get too tied down to a day job or a set of commitments. The context is different, but the potential is the same. So trips like this are not just to take a break from the routine, but to actually try to break the routine, to harness the energy of real life and raw openness on the road and apply it to daily life back on the home field.

It’s all, of course, easier said than done. There are tangible reasons why it’s intuitive to feel this way out here and intuitive to feel laden and squashed back home. But just remembering and reminding are a good start. A lot of it is about how you look at your day, a mere matter of perspective. Demand something from your day (these are instructions to me, but also to you). Insist that you will take time to be creative, to think, to do something that matters regardless of the context of your life. Something you’d be proud of. Something you’ll want to remember on your deathbed. Make contact with people, just because they’re there. Even if you won’t get to see them for years, reach out. Let them know they’re loved. It is the connections we have with other people and with the creative cognizance of our own souls that really matter in this life. The rest is just figuring out a way to maximize that. Or it should be.

Go. Do. Be. Pretend you’re on a roadtrip for the rest of the week. I’ll be trying every week to come for a long time.

(Remind me to do this if I seem to forget.)

Saw Bob Dylan a few days back with my Dad. There’s a 4th Facebook album for those of you following along but not on FB. About the sixth time I’ve seen Dylan if I had to guess – I’m sure I could piece it together with information on this site in various places. The show seemed to me like it was all about divorce, but then, it would. A lot of his songs tore me to shreds in their melancholy beauty, but “Visions of Johanna” was the highlight of the night, followed closely by “Simple Twist of Fate”. The heartbreak in this universe is astounding and thank God we have the poets to try to capture little droplets of it, like stoppered tears in a bottle, to distill our pain and help us understand it and maybe compel us not to pass it on.

Maybe.

Leaving New Mexico, like departing from almost anywhere in the West for points east, always provides this little pang in the back of my mind. This little question of “why?” arises. Why are you doing this? You have seen people who feel more real, more down-to-earth, a community that stands not in opposition to openness in the same way as where you are going. Why leave? Why return? I know why, I have better answers this time around than any of the last times for awhile, but still the question nags like snagged bits of thread on a nail that tugs one just for a moment before releasing the frayed end as one walks away, just a little less whole than before. Every departure is a loss, every decision is opportunity cost, every move is at the expense of some unexplored reality. These are the trade-offs innate to life and to mourn too seriously over any that are not clearly devastating mistakes is costly and counter-productive. But there is a passing glance to be given on the way out of town.

And of course there is the difficulty of leaving alone. Of going anywhere alone, a feeling that doesn’t take, an experience that doesn’t wash no matter how many ventures are made under said conditions. The reason that the night of Dylan was the last night I could’ve chosen to see the Isotopes play at home, not because they were leaving, but because the New Orleans Zephyrs were coming to town thereafter and I cannot watch them play. For reasons that only Emily knows. Reasons I may share someday, but cannot bring myself to, for the dream doesn’t die. I find myself likely to grow old like Snape, embittered, blackened, but carrying this soft fragile unfulfilled love to the end of my darkest days. The pain does not subside, it does not dissipate, it subsists and burrows, grows and changes like a tumor, like a tapeworm, like a ravenous parasite of the soul. The texture or feel may be different, like shades of a bruise, but there is not healing in this metamorphosis. And in the changing, the pain defies adjustment or adaptation, refuses to be tamed by the human spirit, insists on hurting in new and unforeseen ways.

I leave laden and humiliated, the way I make my way in the world. Burdened with the frivolity of items that may help me make a new way and a new life in an old familiar and difficult place. The future has never looked so blank as it does today, at least not since I wrote “Hypothermia” on the frigid Castle fire escape in the early winter of 1999. I remember a decade of telling that young freezing boy it would all be okay. I was lying.

Bob Dylan
The Pavilion
Albuquerque, New Mexico
21 July 2011

Rainy Day Women #12 and #35
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
Things Have Changed
If You Ever Go to Houston
Beyond Here Lies Nothin’
Tangled Up in Blue
Cold Irons Bound
Visions of Johanna
Summer Days
Sugar Baby
Highway 61 Revisited
Simple Twist of Fate
Thunder on the Mountain
Ballad of a Thin Man
—
Like a Rolling Stone
All Along the Watchtower
—
Forever Young

Thanks a lot, GMail. Are there really people out there who are worried that Facebook is closer to taking over the world than Google?

As Goo Goo Dolls would put it, “Scars are souvenirs you never lose. The past is never far.”

In other news, while it wasn’t the most impressive book overall, methinks it was particularly well-timed for me to read Siddhartha this week. There’s a lot of insight in there about the particular paths that might be tempting at this juncture of life and good reminders of what roads are full of folly. Especially interesting as I play some poker and wrestle with the material reminders of my past that I want to haul out to Jersey.

Been sleeping and dreaming too much lately. The hazards of being home. Have extended my home visit a little bit and then will probably be taking about a week to cross back over the country. Leaving Saturday maybe? Still a little bit in flux. Might hike in Rocky Mountain NP, but definitely skipping Grand Canyon and LA, as were possibilities even a couple days ago. Feeling daunted enough about driving another 3k-4k miles at this point.

Next immediate stop: The Frontier!

For those without Facebook, here’s the latest album of pics: Volume 3.

Seven years after that, she sent me a sweet recommitting note from Monrovia, Liberia, which I already reprinted here.

Two days after that, she met a man.

Four days after that, she called me to express sudden and unprecedented doubts in our marriage, eventually admitting after six hours that they stemmed from meeting a man. She promised not to cheat on me.

Five days after that, she cheated on me.

One day after that, she called me to try to divorce me by telephone.

I can’t believe I have lived through the last year. Most days, I’m not so sure I’m glad I have. But for the sake of you all who keep saying you want me to pull through, I’m trying. And the last couple days have been pretty good, actually. No crying in 48 hours alone, which might be a record this year. I don’t expect it to last today, but neither will I be alone all day, thankfully. I do try to plan to maximize my chance at hope.

Been taking a bucket full of pictures on my sojourn across the South, which will all be on Facebook along with the latest video and some other musings as soon as I’m at an Internet connection that isn’t throttled down to prevent visual uploading. That may be as late as Albuquerque, so don’t hold your breath. It also occurs to me that at least two or three of you aren’t on Facebook, so if you’ve missed the pictures you can see them here and here.

Next stop, Dallas. Nuevo by sundown on the 15th.

Happy eighth anniversary, Emily, since we’re not officially divorced yet. It was always you.

Trying to capture every passing moment and twist and turn on the Tour so far is both infeasible and slightly dull, so I think a list is both fitting of my mood, energy/time expenditure interest on this particular evening, and entertaining. It will call to mind a bunch of very random experiences I’ve had that will hopefully, upon future reflection, spring forth a bevy of memories from what this last two weeks have been like without having to itemize each one. Some things are perhaps best recalled as a jumbled mass of joy rather than a sequential turn of linear builds. Of course, memory is pretty darn intractable in my experience, so why I take actions to enhance or alter memory is sort of beyond me. A lot of the rules of how this works don’t seem to apply to my experience or perspective.

Oh, speaking of experiments, I’ve spent a lot of time today deciding that I think I want to get a rabbit in August when I’m back in Jersey. I need to do some research into the availability of rabbits in the area, as well as do some thinking about whether I want to get a show-quality breed or just settle for a mutt or what. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to be taking the rabbit to fairs and ditching debate for 4H. At the same time, there are some really pretty breeds out there and I’ve studied them long enough to have a wishlist of rabbit breeds that is worth consulting when I’m considering purchasing a pet rabbit that may be part of my life for some time to come. But a lagamorph seems to strike the right balance between an attentive furry friend and an animal that does not require constant care over, say, weekends or even possibly week-long trips. The issue of a trip like my present one does come to mind, but next summer is more likely to be set aside for a book than a trip, and there’s always the possibility that people will want to rabbit-sit, especially if he/she is cageable for certain durations. Which itself is another issue – I’m not wild about animals in cages, but if I let him/her romp around the apartment when I’m home, it might be a decent compromise. Even Pando boarded in very small spaces for weeks at a time when we went on longer journeys.

Anyway. Without further dilly-dally, the 24 things I’ve learned on TH’HEAT so far:
1. When robbing a house, one should not attempt to become the Foursquare “Mayor” of that house.
2. Most of the Ryan Adams album “Gold”.
3. Most of the Regina Spektor album “Soviet Kitsch”.
4. I don’t read much when people are around.
5. My phone’s spontaneous-turning-off is 100% correlated to it being closed. If left open, it works permanently until something forces it closed.
6. Many of my friends continue to be better than I am at chess.
7. Dominion may be the most universally liked board game, at least among those who’ve been exposed to it.
8. People are aliens. (To be fair, I’ve known this for a long time – it’s only gotten reaffirmed/reinforced.)
9. Some of the Sufjan Stevens album “Seven Swans”.
10. Some of the Vanessa Carlton album “Harmonium”.
11. It’s a bad idea for me to drive alone for nine hours on the day after a wedding.
12. Waffle House is always a comfort. If I lived nearer a WH, I’d probably be happier. This is probably a good chunk of what got me through 1997-98, no foolin’.
13. I should be more grateful that I still have a lot of hair at age 31 than I am on a daily basis.
14. A laptop makes it possible to not really feel like one is on a trip in the same way that taking a trip before having a laptop (and a cell phone) felt.
15. I don’t regularly eat as often as most people. (Also previously known but re-emphasized.)
16. I apparently have built my entire life around communicating with other people who I like. This has probably been a great decision. It also explains why most of my lifetime travel has been in the US, where these people are, rather than outside it, where other adventures may be more interesting but communication is vastly harder.
17. Lots of people are or seem or claim to be completely fine being partnerless for long and even perhaps permanent stretches of their lives.
18. I have very little in common with the people described in 17. (Probably a known, though 17 itself was just not well known prior to this trip.)
19. While no one else’s obsession with Chipotle burns quite as brightly as mine, most people functionally act as though it does.
20. No one thinks the Bar Exam is fun. This may or may not be related to the fact that there is no “high pass” or commendation for being a top scorer thereon.
21. Everyone is optimistic going into law school. Everyone.
22. The 30’s are when the real medical problems seem to start.
23. The evidence that families are cults seems insurmountable. (Also previously known, but boldly underlined herein.)
24. I have no idea, still, what this trip is going to be like on the long lonely stretch between North Carolina and Texas, nor on the return run between New Mexico and Philadelphia.

I like lists. I can’t even pretend that that was even a little unknown prior. So twenty-four is what you get. Good night for now.