Like any good American, I have come to enjoy and expect instant gratification. So throughout my time in Seattle, I believed I'd learned why I was there, and built from there. So it took me by surprise to recently learn why I was actually there (and have to admit at this point that the answer to that question may turn out to be grander still).
There was a verse from the Murder By Death song, "A Second Opinion," which I adopted as my theme for moving to Seattle: "I watched you grow. I saw you fall again and again. You'd cut your knee & start to bleed, but wouldn't let the pain in. Let the dogs bite at your ankles. Let the sunshine burn your eyes. But... will you just walk away this time?"
My entire time in Tennessee was defined by taking the easy way out. I had been a spoiled child in Texas, and learned plenty about not working hard, and getting what I wanted. I was aware that this was my past, but I didn't know how to break out of it. Life was too easy, and I'd learned from my few [relatively] difficult times that life had more to teach me when the good times were gone.
I was terribly depressed. The enjoyment I got from hanging out, playing video games & watching television was always undermined by the fact that I could be getting more from life.
I'd been learning that ever since I'd moved to Tennessee, but I was never really aware of it until I met Michael, who felt the same way. He and I would spend day & night & day, at the mall, at Waffle house, and on walks across campus, discussing this very thing.
This perspective on life defined me, was me. I cared little for anything outside of considering, reading, learning about what kind of life could be meaningful to me. The work I did irritated me, the conversations I had with most people disappointed me. Other than Michael, and later Katie, nobody seemed to feel this way about life. I wanted to devote my life to something meaningful to me, and I was fed up with the distractions that seemed to make up 90% of my life. No friends, family, girls, jobs, or anything meant more to me than this devotion, and I was ready to leave them all behind. I was ready for years, before I finally did.
By July 2007, I was jobless and homeless, and completely devoted to what I considered the Path of Adversity. And life was good.
I suffered, but did not feel punished. I think that was the key. I had nothing I felt I needed to atone for. I stopped apologizing to myself for not doing what I felt I should, and just started doing it.
I have photos from Hawai'i, that make record of the beautiful things I saw. You can see me and Jeremy living in a tent on the beach, living on a sailboat, hiking, camping, swimming. On paper, the perfect vacation. But it wasn't a vacation. It was "the first day of the rest of my life" every day. In those pictures, you can see mountains, forests, beaches, but you don't see me curled up in the fetal position in someone's back yard, crying because I believed I would die within weeks, without a job or money.
This was nearer what I felt my life should be, but still too easy. I spent that week thinking I would die, but once I realized the truth of the matter, I was fine, growing comfortable. If there's anything I hate most, it is how I cling to comfort.
I'd taken a course in Social Philosophy in college, and hadn't cared for it. Now that I had a greater sense of "life doesn't have to be like this," I began to think more about how life could be. It didn't require starting from scratch or doing everything differently. I just required reconsidering premises on which things were based.
Reading Daniel Quinn's books helped with that, as did studying Buddhism.
This is what Scott and I would talk about in Murfreesboro, and when he and I moved to Tucson, we pursued these ideas practically. Jobless & effectively squatting, I worked my way into things like having a job and doing household repairs while considering what was behind the actions I took.
Before that, everything had been a matter of spiritual philosophy. I had a strong basis in faith, and wanted to live by it. By the time I'd gotten to Tucson, I was fairly balanced between spiritual and social philosophy. As friends go, I had Leslie and Dawna with me on the one side, and Scott and Adrienne with me on the other.
But as I've learned recently, when I got to Seattle, I essentially bottled up my spiritual side. I would have denied it all the while, and it wasn't completely gone. I'd just applied certain blinders to it. I was a fool, not being suspicious of my sudden change in attitude.
I was still as fully applied to change and growth as I could be. Scott, Adrienne, my father, Jennifer, Anna.... these were the people who I talked with most, and they all wanted to see things change as much as I did. Abhor comfort, go through hard times, live a life that is worth living. We were going to be the Revolution.
Seriously. We hadn't just decided to do something.We had a plan, and it was a simple plan, and it was a somewhat realistic plan, only requiring enough of a leap of faith to satisfy my sense that things shouldn't be too easy. (And, for the record, it was a nice, fun plan, requiring no violence or politics.)
But its time came and passed, and we got bogged down in the mundane details of life. I will not speak for the others, but for my part, I got bogged down in trying to be a normal person. I had a house and a girlfriend and a garden and pets and friends.
I am not a normal fucking person.
I left Seattle thinking of what we could do to change the world. I asked Scott, my primary partner in this crime, what he thought, and he replied:
I am not trying to change the world. I am trying to change myself. Through this maybe I will change my world. That would be okay. And maybe if enough of us engage ourselves thusly the world would be affected as well. But my goal is not to change anything but myself and how I interact personally with my world.
His answer should have been mine too, I realized at the time. By removing myself from my spiritual philosophy, I had become a cypher. My social philosophy had come to consider "The Greater Good" rather than myself. I had forgotten that this path had begun by, and was meant to be centered on, following my heart. Scott's reply brought my attention to this fact, but knowledge of it failed to help me understand what I should do next.
Whether for good reason or not, I am not prepared to blog about what happened over the month after Scott's reply. Maybe you'd think I was crazy, maybe you would think me wicked, but I am neither, and in the end it's none of your business. Suffice it, for now, to say I had spirituality shoved down my throat, and I exercised long atrophied muscles by putting myself to the test and by facing unbearably hard decisions. There were ghosts and fears faced, and there was Recognition. Perhaps most importantly, I again realized and accepted that I want nothing more than to be on the path of adversity.
And so "I walked the road from Tucson to San Antonio, the smell of blood on my breath."
I have more to say on said path, speculation on what it means to travel it, and on what it is at all. But I've already spent two hours writing this, and have so much more to say. But at least this post does what each on this blog ought to -- I've told you where I am, and how it is to be here.
At the moment, I don't feel like I'm "almost there," but I feel like I'm getting there. And it's damned difficult. So, hooray for me.
