Thoughts from the End of May/Now (MidJune)

I wrote this in a cabin in Stowe, Vermont when I had no access to the Internet:

The only way I've thought of so far to describe the feeling is as the end of a prologue. It's as though an entire lifetime of schooling and structured laws of place and engagement have ended and now, spat out on the other side, finally released from any obligations or necessary next steps, the time has come to begin the story. Of course that's absurd and it discounts all of life lived up to this point as "not yet the story" but a.) this is how I feel, for better or for worse and b.) the prologue is an equal vital part of any book. Just because the prologue comes before chapter 1, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be read.
So now, with characterization in place, bildung completed (in an institutional sense at least), and nothing but time on my hands and space winding out on the neverending road of life, I have a few thoughts I would like to share: I'm in Vermont in a cabin next to a little creek, a bird is chirping outside and the sky is grey and raining. That's all I know right now. Nik is in the other room asleep though it's nearly 3 pm, but who am I to judge because I woke up after 1 and only then because the phone was ringing. After college...sleep. After sleep...life? I don't know and maybe that's the wisest statement I've ever made in my statement-filled life up to this point. I've got a job waiting for me in Alaska starting on June 15. Between now and then, Nik and I are planning on driving to the west coast from Vermont, and after my contract ends in Alaska, I'm thinking of going to California and Hawaii and probably back to the east coast for a bit, and then on to Ireland because I've been given a grant to study literature in Cork. In the meantime, I have things I want to write, scholarships to finish up (Fulbright, etc.) and I'm now 2/3 of the way through Finnegans Wake, so I'm gradually gradually making my way through that monstrosibeauty.
But here's the question on my mind now and ironically it's the same one that I faced during my gap year before beginning my undergraduate degree: Do I want to spend the rest of my life playing by the rules of the critics, putting on ties and smiling humbly, trying to convince them that I deserve this opportunity to further my ambitions within their systems and institutions, or do I want to finally muster the courage to break free from the safe path of writing applications and showing the strength of my resume and begin my life divorced from these external expectations. To live because I am alive and I have a heart that can and will point me towards the places I need to be and the people I need to be in love with. Nik made a fine point yesterday when he said that really, when we interview for scholarships and schools and whatnot, we are not the ones on trial - it is in fact our interlocutors who are on trial, for while they may think they are sitting at the gates of a prestigious opportunity with the power of God to make or revoke brilliant futures from up and coming students, they are sadly mistaken. It is their choices, the paths they have already irrevocably taken that are truly on trial. They put forth their hearts and lifetimes of experience in the tones of their voices and the body language of their beckoning hands, and it is up to us as student to determine, yes that is the sort of thing I wish to become, or else, fuck that, in you I see failed conservatism and a withered and bureaucratic heart...yours is a net that I will fly over...I sincerely thank you for the fair warning. These people think they can determine who gets to move on, but the reality is they are quietly searching for young proteges who, if everything works out well enough, will grow up to replace them, improve upon them and perpetuate their cycle, and if we happen to be those individuals, they have more to gain by our acceptance than we do theirs.
That said, I've spent the last few days basking in the beauty of Vermont making crazy whacked out meals with Nik (delicious, all of them) and somehow still managing to feel a twang of anxiety with regards to what must be done, what obligations I have hanging over my head. I feel as if my entire upbringing has been a sort of corruption that has trained me how to feel uncomfortable at the most liberating moments, and to feel useless at the moments I have actually reached the supposed goal of all work. And that I have not yet managed to shake, but I do take some consolation in the knowledge that now, free of that finally, I have the rest of my life to begin chipping away at that neurosis, to grow in all the ways the world sees fit for me and become that which I always believed in all along anyway.
Neurosis and the unbearable weight of a mind controlled by bureaucracy and the Protestant work ethic all seem to be a prologue to a terribly American story, and now it's the shedding of that that seems to be begun in chapter one. To grow and move, dance and stretch, fix my spine both as a physical relief and as an allegory for my stiff and nervous heart.
Now that life has begun anew, it would seem reasonable to begin a new blog on new terms, but I've grown rather fond of this one. Plus all that unfolds ahead of me ineluctably must contain the thoughts and developments that began last summer in the middle east as well as the 21 years before that. We cannot escape who we have been, but we can try our damnedest to free ourselves from who we do not wish to become. With that in mind, I shall continue this blog as we wander across North America and up into Canada. I will update it from California and Hawaii and New York and Ireland and France Romania Russia Africa India China Cambodia and Japan (assuming I ending moving in those directions), or not...the road is entirely free, entirely loose and the winds are always changing. If you wish to follow my tales, by all means do. If you do not, please don't apologize the next time you see me. Nobody owes anybody anything. That's the nature of freedom. To follow a frequently thrown about slogan of our times: Freedom isn't free...unless we crack our shells of nervous obligations and live as fully and honestly as we possibly can.
At the end of A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, Stephen tells Cranly that he plans to leave Ireland and thus be able to finally express himself in whatever art or lifestyle he deems to be the most honest (Joyce began work on that, interestingly enough, very soon after he turned 22). If the Tao has taught anything, it is not a religion or a mysticism or a series of dogma that will make anyone and everything alright. It is in fact an attitude that can be translated to the Art of Living in the World. On those terms, we are all artists, all poets, naked and desperate. The only difference between one and another is how they manage their own desperation. I'm not saying that I have any idea how to go about things, only...I'm ready to start trying.
I send you all all my love and hope all lines of communication stay gapingly wide open. And a very happy 22nd birthday to the lovely Kate Ray, studying out in Shanghai.

Peace and cheers,
tcm

Rereading over those words, I remember the ten days I spent with Nik in that cabin and can honestly say they were some of the best of my life. Those were days of the grooviest splendor according to all abstract assertions I've ever felt then foolishly tried to put into words. Simply put, we read. We read and cooked. And we healed. We baked loaf after loaf of bread and chopped wood. I reread the Phantom Tollbooth (thanks again for the gift, Gabe), The Tao of Pooh (for surprisingly only the second time), worked my way through two chapters of Finnegans Wake (no shabby achievement), and read Steibeck's Cannery Row cover to cover in one sitting. The days were terribly long yet went by quickly. The words flowed only when there was heart behind them (otherwise we were silent), and we both grew little by little until we were ready to go step on the bullshit of the world and master the cut of the samurai of groove sauce. Then we went back to Middlebury and things didn't exactly fall apart, but so much of our surety and easy groove seemed to burn away.
We took on new masks of made up accents, said almost nothing to each other and played the hosts who followed the flow of the lives of others and managed to lose some sort of sight of what we had been building for the previous 2 weeks. Oh well, it's probably all as Nik says: the way of a world far greater and subtler than either of our own petty wills and egos. Needless to say, we didn't end up driving across Canada (Nik got a bad vibe and stayed behind while I flew to Seattle for 2 days with Elliot Paquette of Boulder High School fame and then on to Alaska). Before I left, we spent 12 hours or so with a rastafarian reggae producer, who is also a 5 star chef, a master carver, shaman of sorts, herbalist, and bushido master. Walking into his home you begin to suspect there's nothing of any real value in this world that he's not a master of. Anyway, I'll leave the specifics of my take on this extremely rare cat out, but he said something to me that I've been ruminating over ever since: he said looking into my eyes, he felt I have the makings of becoming a master of something in my own right and he strongly recommended ancient east asian marshal arts - specifically, those rooted the most deeply in meditation and philosophy. His words strangely echoed something Nik had said over a week earlier about him always having felt like I had something of the ninja about me. I'm not sure how seriously to take any of this, but I must admit that the lifestyle I've lived up until now has seemed to be pointing in that direction for quite some time: the academic study, my asceticism, respect for those who truly know evey muscle in their own bodies and how to use them...I don't know. Food for thought.
So I left Nik and Carlee and Anson (who's biking across the country right now) on the east coast and flew west. Now I'm in the heart of Alaska working for a major corporation for the second time in my life (after instructing at Copper Mountain when I was 15) and still trying to figure out how I feel about it (both the corporate employment and my place out here in a fancy lodge in the heart of the wilderness). I don't want to jump to conclusions so I wont yet comment here but so far I can say that the land surrounding Anchorage is simply some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever encountered in my life, the fact that it never gets dark is a trip I am still far from getting used to, the mountain view from my balcony is unrivaled in all my experience of the world, the mosquitoes come in droves described only in fiction, I'm reading Haruki Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicles (after reading Into the Wild on the plane) which is mad trippy, and with a little luck, as soon as I post this blog entry, I will proceed to begin work (finally) on that novel I've been talking about for so long. Wish me luck.

All my love,
tcm