Auspicions

I have two things to write today: an address to a critic and a story of times.

1.
Two postings down from this one, I received a comment from an anonymous source that out of offense, I censored, knowing not what else to do, but now, a half month later, I think I'm ready to face it and see if I can turn it into a worthwhile thought. The critic wrote:
Student Toss Pot
Pretension spelt Theo
You are a useless hobo

When I read it, it turned my stomach upside down because I felt after all this time, after all this traveling and writing, trying so god damn hard to convey experience and lessons to an audience who may have cared to hear about it, I was being accused of my two worst fears: a. that I'm deluding myself in my motives and my writing is, after all, just a toss pot of pretensions and b. while I think I'm learning and growing and becoming a better person, I am, after all, just a useless hobo looking to see things on the dimes of others, taking handouts wherever my eagleeyes can spot them. So I censored the critic and fumed about what kind of asshole would go on to a site that, all things considered, was just some person's sincere thoughts, and tear him down when he could have just as easily left well enough alone and stopped reading the blog.

Now I think I'm ready to really consider the implications of the critique and formulate some sort of response to it:
I don't know what I'm doing here. I've been a lot of places for a 22 year old, but I doubt I've ever fully known what I was doing anywhere. For a good part of that time, I have felt just as useless as I've been accused of being and instead of becoming more useful, I've just kind of wallowed in the feeling. I try to take consolation from my Tao Te Ching and the Beatles lyrics "there's nowhere you can be which isn't where you're meant to be..." but that doesn't change the fact that time moves forward, I grow older, see more places, and fail to work or gain skills, spending most of my time enjoying scenery and thinking about the magic of If. I came to Alaska with a job lined up that, had I stayed at it, would have given me about $6000 by the end, and a limited amount of experience of the state. I wasn't happy there so I quit and came to Homer where I got a job that paid $10/hour with no taxes, but that too didn't make me happy so I quit that becoming a complete bum once more. And I felt guilty about that. I'll leave the state with little more money than I had when I arrived and my project to write a book has advanced exactly 1.5 pages. Where did my time go? What took up this last month?

I'm not entirely sure. I spent some time camping, going to the parties of 20 year olds, a few dates, the occassional errand that needed to be taken care of, and the rest of the time, I guess was spent in reverie. In the last month I've read 100 pages of Finnegans Wake, but it's hard to say if that was worth my time and anyway it shouldn't have taken a whole month.

This morning Sven and I were talking and, while its terribly hard to convey who Sven is in a word without getting in too deep, let's just say he's extremely cerebral and mystical/spiritual. He's the quiet, gentle soul who spent the majority of his childhood alone reading "what does it all mean?" books and he has a terribly difficult time moving from hours and hours of journal writing about what he needs to do and what his options are to stepping forth and putting anything, really, into motion. A huge part of my time here has been has a whet stone for him to work through his priorities, but more importantly, to see the flip side in action: dancing when we feel like dancing, knowing nothing about what needs to be done besides "I want to go to San Francisco asap to see Kate Ray" and apparently Lisa Bass and other will be there as well. I'm also packed full of Tao quotes that support the ideas of "A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arrival" and "if you want to be reborn you must let yourself die."

So this morning, Sven and I were on the porch, looking out over the bay while the sun burned down on us, and I was reiterating those two quotes to Sven, who is absolutely intent on the idea of intentions with a fully envisioned path and its realization, when my own words, which are so easy to say and so damn hard to actually live in one's own life, came back to me and got me thinking about being a hobo and everything around it. A good traveler has no set plans and is not set upon arrival. The master lets himself be shaped by the world, he is as common and rugged as a stone.

Yes, I am a hobo. I move from place to place, get a job if it's offered/convenient, live wherever I have an invitation to, and spend a fair amount of time thinking about where I can get to next and why I might want to go there. That is how I've lived for awhile and how I believe I will continue to until I find a place that opens my heart in a way I've not yet experienced and then I will stay put and ride it out. We're so concerned about building a future, taking the right steps to get to where our minds have told us it would be smart to be, o build skills, cultivate this or that, grow in the way we kind of envisioned all along, or maybe society envisioned it for us. But something occurs to me. If your heart's not in it as you cultivate, the act itself becomes a chore and the product is guaranteed to be mediocre at best. It's only when you find a project or a work that consumes your heart and puts you in a place where you truly want to be there that anything resembling love or "progress" begins to unfold. And when it does, you walk the path and become better in all those thousands of ways without even realizing it. That perfect person who seems so far down the road who you will only become with this work and those experiences grows up inside of you while you're too busy working, loving, enjoying your engagement with life to notice or (and here's the best part) stress about it.

Yes I am a hobo. I move where my heart suggests and I follow whatever groove I happen to stumble upon and I spend a lot of time idle. But in the meantime, I think both Sven and I have grown through our friendship and conversations, I've been privy to an entire culture in Alaska that broadens my mind just a little bit more to what is and what can be in this world, and though I didn't make any money or write my book or even finish reading Finnegans Wake, I believe I've been exactly where I needed to be, doing exactly what I needed to do, and the knowledge of that puts my heart at ease and my mind to rest.

With regards to being pretensious...sorry if that offends you. I try not to be, I try to be completely sincere and express myself fully. If that comes out as pretensious...well, I don't know what to say beyond, forgive me father for I have sinned, or else maybe, judge not lest ye be judged. I don't know. Pretension might be in the eye of the beholder. I might be kind of a prick. I'm not sure. Philosophically, I believe the greatest journey in life is the elimination of the ego and god knows I'm trying. Perhaps the pretensions will fade away with time, age, growth, a greater sense of ease in the world.

I send my love to my friends and critics alike,
Travis

2.
(Will come in my next posting, hopefully tomorrow)