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March 6, 2011
Every Place You've Never Been
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The truth is that, when I look at a world map, all I see are the places I haven't been mocking me. That's what haunts me day and night. Everything that everyone else wants, or appears to want - security and money and a place to call home...all of these things to me are little more than poison. Security is a warm prison, or so it seems.
My family worries and frets, "Aren't you going to save any money for Jennifer?" Oh yeah. Because that's what helps people the most. Handing them a large sum of money when they turn 18 or 21. Yeah. That's generally shown to work out for the best.
"What about when you can't work any more? Don't you need a long term disability insurance?" they whine. "I have it," I reply. "I keep it in a nightstand by my bed. If I'm so clueless that I can't work, then trust me, I don't want to be alive."
I keep buying these dirt bikes and stranding them in different cities because I'm always planning on dropping out. I pick my destinations based on the shock factor when I announce it. "Panama" seemed to get the right response, so I've been planning on going to Panama on a dirt bike for some time now, only I keep getting these silly little assignments that keep me busy.
The trip is still out there. A splinter in my mind. The problem is that my current project is scheduled to end in August, and that's the right time to be in Alaska, not Panama, so there is that.
The best travelers know that you have to follow the seasons in your peregrinations. This is only the way. If you're not chasing the seasons, then I can't help you. Probably our paths won't cross. Or, put another way, if I'm laying out my money to go somewhere, it won't be in the "off season". That's not in the cards. I'm not going to Phoenix in August and I'm not going to Anchorage in January. Now, granted, I was in Madison, WI in January, but I started there in August and I wasn't on vacation. Work is different, in my dim view of the world.
Not much is known of this, but I turned down a 1 year extension of my contract in Pittsburgh. Additionally, I essentially turned down a local project in Denver so I could stay on the road.
I'm too close to that last woman here and I keep falling down that same slippery slope and I've been down these roads so many times you just can' t know and if something out there is different than this...this dull throbbing pain of samedom, then whereever it is, Lord God let me be there.
And so I go on the road and travel so often you can only imagine, racing through airports and tunnels and cities. Sitting at home, buying plane tickets, and trying to decide which city I want to sleep in. Only in this maelstrom of chaos and confusion does anything really come into focus.
Only when I've completely escaped from home, can I safely look back and wonder what on earth I was so afraid of. After all the grenades are frantically tossed and all the bridges brightly burned, only then can anything be known. Evaluated, safely, in the rear-view mirror.
A tiny sliver of this is instinct, I think. A splinter of the human condition. The practical realization that danger is best evaluated from a safe distance.
Only now, when I can sleep here or there. Only when I'm truly free to fly anywhere in the world. When I buy plane tickets and think...where to I want to spend Thursday night? Here or there? And what about Sunday night?
Only now, only now, when all of the future possibilities are spread upon the table like Pente beads. Only in this perspective can anything be viewed or known.
Only from the comfort of someone else's fireplace can any perspective be gained. Only from the sanctuary of some distant city can I safely look back and wonder from what am I trying to escape.
Everyone around me seems so frail and mortal, yet blissfully unimpeded by reality. The guy that sold me the bike in CA had his hand crushed while working on a car and three surgeries haven't helped him. My boss in CA is going to some ex-inlaw's funeral and he laments how many in-laws and ex-in-laws funerals he'll have to attend since they're both on their 2nd marriage and I turn to him and I say "what makes you think you'll outlive them?" This is why I have no friends - I just can't listen to this stuff.
He tells me "You need to pick a route into work, and go the same way every day. That way, you can find the safest route, and learn the nuances of the traffic better." And, of course, to him this makes sense. But for me, it's the anti-thesis of making sense. It makes me want to stick my hand in a blender.
We're all being picked off, one by one like carnival ducks and yet everyone keep dutifully trudging toward this distant target where we'll all be financially secure and retired and finally free from the economic shackles of capitalism and I'm like "What on earth makes you believe in that illusion? " This is no better than some late-night informercial.
Live is about the journey. It's about the adventure. Not a death-march toward some future-state happiness. That's a mirage - a Potemkin village.
Now, why is it that we can't be happy with what we have? Why is it that we measure ourselves against our neighbors and against the commercials on the television? Why is it so hard to appreciate the home when you're home and the away when you're away? What is this internal grist that drives the human condition? That propels us forward in spite of everything we have?
I don't know the answers to this, any more than a cat on a computer monitor knows why it's warm. It's not for the cat to understand why the monitor gets warm. Only the cat knows that it is warm. That's all that it can know.
I suppose I'll build a fire, thumb through a worn copy of The Grapes of Wrath, and then spend the night at home. And then fly again tomorrow.
Posted by Rob Kiser on March 6, 2011 at 11:23 AM
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