the urge to be going
most of life is fraught and aimless. you get the chance to see something directly, don’t look away. don’t take it for granted.
—
it is a bit strange. perhaps. 34 and midwestern and growing up rural, middle class would not be the character background suggesting one who wants to leave the country on one way tickets. most of the people in my world don’t have that inclination. i do. in two days i will be leaving the sixth time like this. quit my jobs. some sort of feral instinct to be gone. live out of a backpack. i know only for certain that it is the middle of march, that i must be home by the middle of june, and that my first destination is laos.
when i wake up my life is good. i have a modest little apartment filled with love and books and plants in a charming city with nice parks. i sit in the corner most mornings with my coffee and my books and she smiles at me when she walks out of the bedroom. i find getting decent enough work easy. i have cool friends. i like my life here. i have all the things one could reasonably want. so why the itchy feet?
“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship’s whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, once a bum always a bum.” — Travels With Charley, John Steinbeck
—
it’s possible part of the explanation is in my blood. my ancestors came over the pond about a hundred years ago. certainly economic necessity was at play, they may have not felt like they were on a grand adventure, but something about them felt driven to go. and they must have felt something here was worth coming to see. they heard of green fields and golden sunsets.
it’s possible there’s a decent amount attributed to basic personality psychology. it’s not clear where i got this from, but i’m one of those people who tends to score high on openness to new experiences. a lifelong affinity for substances and late nights and meeting new friends must be tied a little to a propensity for going.
maybe my ego simply has some force. bastard wants to be able to say, “i did that.” and maybe even to say it to my self, which is just as strong of an egomaniacal inclination as saying it to others. imagine the beaming ray of pride projected inward you get when you behave very well, then remember that pride is one of the deadly sins. hopefully that’s in low measure. it’s better to be someone who wants to “do” than to be someone who wants to say he “has done.”
there’s an unfortunate point of self-consciousness. didion spoke of the consequences of lacking self-respect and how it can make one feel they are always sitting front row to a movie that is spliced of one’s failures. didion was right. we are attuned so very much to promises not kept to us by us when we lie to our selves. and for those lies we don’t go to the stand just when called out, we live on them. i told my self i would do this. as pathetic as an excuse that is.
“Everyone wishes a measure of mystery in their life that they have nothing in particular to deserve.” — Legends of theFall, Jim Harrison
but what if you deserve it.
“The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear the mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life. To be anywhere else is ‘to paint eyeballs on chaos.’ When I watch blue sheep, I must watch blue sheep, not be thinking about sex, danger, or the present, for this present — even while I think of it — is gone.” — The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen
—
i think, at base, what i’m actually most drawn to is something fairly mechanical about the inner workings of my brain.
at home, when much of the time falls under the category of routine, a sort of functional autopilot takes over parts of the day. big chunks of it in fact. you don’t really need all your mental faculties to find the coffee cup in your kitchen or the tooth brush in your bathroom. it’s always there. sections of your work life are repetitive and require less and less engagement over time. even your social schedule follows a pattern, and some sort of ingrained appreciation for energy efficiency nudges you towards the same types of activities and conversations.
when you are largely taken by these routines the thought patterns that accompany them remain mostly within a certain range. they repeat. imagine your thoughts existing on a ski hill. the more you follow a particular track on successive trips the more worn in the track becomes and the more it becomes tempting/easy/efficient to use the same track again. and again. and again.
what radical novel experiences offer is a chance to shake up the snow globe, forcing you to use new thought tracks. when you cannot as consistently rely on the old tracks you are forced to become more engaged, moment to moment, in what is happening. you notice more. the edges catch your eye. you recognize the lack of worn tracks. you watch blue sheep. it is as if a new realm of potential subjective experiences becomes unlocked.
so this type of travel is a countermeasure against repetitive tendencies. and when you’re a self-loathing bitch like me it’s a welcome retreat. every decision must be actively made when you are never home. there is no autopilot on the road.
—
there’s a scene in autumn by ali smith where daniel inquires what elisabeth is reading and when she tells he responds “and what did it make you think about” — not what was it about or do you like it or what did you think OF IT.
but what did it make you think ABOUT.
what will this all i’m about to do make pop up in my hunk of mysterious grey matter?
“The default network stands in a kind of seesaw relationship with the attentional networks that wake up whenever the outside world demands our attention; when one is active, the other goes quiet, and vice versa.” — How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan
—
and maybe if you think you can set the conditions to make it more likely you see something directly, who are you to say no? count yourself lucky kid. quit asking why this or that.
—
there will be discomfort. certainly. especially at the start. it takes a while to find the rhythm of this sort of thing. these aren’t muscles i always use. finding busses every couple days. i’ll have days where i’m tired and lonely. i’ll feel gross and smelly even though my bar for those feelings is quite low and i’ll want a hot fucking bath in my weird blue bathroom with my candles and my speaker. i’ll miss my home some of the mornings and wonder why the hell i’m not in that chair in the corner where that lovely soul smiles at me.
—
“But at the time, you see, my blood was hot in my veins! How could I stop to examine the whys and wheretofores? To think things out properly and fairly, a fellow’s got to be calm and old and toothless. When you’re an old gaffer with no teeth, it’s easy to say: ‘Damn it, boys, you mustn’t bite!’ But, when you’ve got all thirty-two teeth…A man’s a savage beast when he’s young; yes, boss, a savage, man-eating beast!” — Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis
—
life is a more precarious offering than most of us are acting it to be most of the time.
life is for the living.
may the lord be with you.
yeah i’m gonna need the devil too.
