Habits
After only a month on the Appalachian Trail, embraced by the moss and the ferns, the titmice and the warblers, she began shedding deeply ingrained customs without deliberation, molting as casually and instinctively as the Corn snake she admired before her. She made no conscious connection as she watched it writhe and rub, but she intuitively understood she’d also outgrown the skin that had encased her thus far.
Her Tom's of Maine Long Lasting Deodorant was jettisoned after only two weeks, the weight of it pulling more on her vanity than her pack and she’d only found herself being aware of her musk on two occasions initially: when she’d stop to chat with hikers late in the day and first thing in the morning before emerging from her Eddie Bauer, down-filled cocoon. Soon, it was not even an after-thought.
One item which had slipped past what she’d thought were stringent standards was the four pack of Bic razors. They were so light and seemingly essential that their inclusion wasn’t considered until after her legs and pits began to sprout and flourish. She’d pulled out the Ziploc of toiletries, pushed past the medium-bristled brush, nail clippers, Neosporin and pulled out the razors before it hit her. She regarded them curiously, almost with surprise, her vision altered now as it was.
“Why did I pack these?” She looked up and around, though she knew her isolated campsite was empty, anticipating judgement-filled frowns. It was only her, staring at herself, embarrassed yet repentant.
She stared at the razors and experienced an existential moment almost on par with the day the Pileated woodpecker followed for hours, tapping out a morse code she began to understand and the morning her personal sunrise on Hawksbill Mountain whispered, “I’ve got you.”
“Hairy and happy,” she whispered, rubbing the almost translucent blond visitors. No need to fly to Europe to feel free. “The trail will set you free,” she smiled.
Of course, as is often the case, the answers don’t really come until after the test. Only after she’d finished her planned portion of the trail and was back at her boutique PR firm on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, would she really know how many habits she’d actually broken and those which had only been bent, ready to reshape her upon her return.
Geographic Cure
There's no such thing as a geographic cure: trading one address for another to heal what ails you. A move might temporary alleviate some of your symptoms - apathy, selfishness, envy, rage - but there is no cleansing, no real renewal, no permanent change of any consequence.
Many have cursed the bustle and neon buzz of the city and found solace in a cul-de-sac named after a tree which isn't even native, trading the buzz of neon for the buzz of hovering streetlights which no one is out late enough to hear. But soon, bit by bit, like forwarded mail appearing silently in the mailbox, they are once again cursing the treadmill they're sweating to pay off, waving robotically to neighbors while self-righteously mocking their obvious case of suburban malaise.
And what of the really brave ones who are so self-aware and possessed as to cast off their life-defining zip code for a truly wild place? Do they fare any better? If the main ingredient of the suffocating boredom in which they were marinating has nothing to do with their location and everything to do with them, the call of the wild goes unanswered. Their jilted zip code tracks them down and moves into their still vacant heart. Despite their best intentions, it's as if they'd never left. They will soon succumb to seeing their new world in their old way.
If I am boring, moving to an exotic locale is simply using deodorant in lieu of bathing. The stench of my petty thoughts and small schemes will find its way to my upturned nose soon enough. And no fresh breeze from a beach can blow it off and away. When anger fuels me long after the caffeine wanes, a quiet cove is sugar water in an IV drip. It may look helpful but I'm still sick.
Playing at Loneliness
Only people surrounded by somewhat intimate relationships fantasize about the freedom of being unencumbered, untethered. Like battling zombies on a smoky, apocalyptic road underneath a down comforter, cocooned in our Brinks-monitored home.
Truly lonely people, alone people, don’t fantasize about their reality. Their persistent, lumbering loneliness is ever-present, shuffling just a few steps behind with hands outstretched, waiting to consume them should they ever stop looking and hoping.
Clarity
It's often dangerous when the direction in our lives seems crystal clear, encouraging us to rush forward with abandon only to be met with a face full of glass. A smudge, bird crap, water spots, a crack even. The things we curse for sullying our view are the very things which offer a prudent pause.
Voicemail
He clung to her last message though it was neutral, cold even. He imbued it with essential emotion. Like the stranded hiker who knows the hand warmers have expired but won’t accept that their passive presence will do nothing to sustain him.
“Water under the bridge"
I often say this to myself, sometimes to others, as a way of trying to navigate forward, beyond past failures, despite current bitterness. No point in wasting time with that or them.
With particularly painful memories, I follow the water down its meandering course, out to sea, watch it evaporate, feel the cloud form, hear it slap against huge leaves in a lost jungle, see with glee some monkey slurp it up and piss it out.
“Yeah, really under the bridge.” I smirk. “Time to move on.”
At one point recently, I came to the conclusion it was actually the bridge that was underwater. Due to either ongoing storms upriver or a stubborn dam downriver, the water has risen up and over.
“Bridge out” is more appropriate I confess.
I'm not sure when the rain will stop. Maybe blowing up the dam is something I should entertain.
Survival Stories
Humans have always been drawn to stories of survival.
Both fictional – Greek heroes battling capricious gods and one-eyed giants, an old man and big fish, a girl with a quiver in her heart and on her back - and factual. The true ones seem to burn with a light and heat which draws us closer.
Rugby players scrumming on a frozen peak, enduring beyond reason via courage and cannibalism. Perhaps the courage to be cannibals. A solo hiker trapped between a rock and a hard choice, saving his life by sacrificing a limb via a dull pocketknife and pluck. People and parties not just scaling Everest but descaling it. Souls adrift on waves of water and sand.
Countless books have spawned almost as many movies, reality TV, videos. We flitter like moths around the dangers of other people’s fire surmising if they make it, we might as well. We´re inspired by real-life protagonists pulling themselves through frozen mud, holding down seagull guts, drinking their own urine, battling Mother Nature and all her cold-hearted kids.
Yet what about the millions of non-fiction fables of survivors enduring their tedious treks to the never-ending assembly line, the claustrophobic cubicle. Those who find themselves floating in bland and buzzing office spaces and noxious factories every day. Every day. Surviving via courage and cannibalism as well. Staying alive despite Boredom attaching itself and sucking their vitality like so many leaches, by feeding on themselves, on their own dying or dead dreams that haven’t yet turned. Not yet rotten and rank.
Day after day, holding down a steady stream of reports, memos, email, training videos. Part A in part B, insert, twist, stamp. Part A in part B, insert, twist, stamp. Crawling through cold and lifeless fields of data., screen after screen of soul-sucking spreadsheets. Subsisting on juices so far from creative.
When was the last time you were inspired by an actuary? A spot-welder, receptionist?
Look around. Better yet, look in the mirror.
And be inspired.
Rain
The rain was so soft you could only just feel it on your face or see it in puddles as you passed.
It was the kind of rain that forced you to find the right backdrop to confirm its falling. Even then it felt like an optical illusion, something you might be imagining, projecting. Dry margins next to buildings testified to a lack of courage to connect with something so solid and permanent.
Then all at once, as if gauging the collective doubt or dismissal, the rain united, double and triple drops, daring everyone to ignore them. Umbrellas popped open, peopled cursed and scurried, hoping as they hopped over the quickly expanding puddles.
As quickly as it started, it stopped. Announcing playfully, or impudently, “Just testing.”
Boredom
Boredom is a death. At the least, an aggressive but perhaps necessary hibernation.
Impulses neutered, chemical reactions stunted. Sleep on steroids, bloated and puffy. But boredom and hibernation both serve a purpose. Ursine experts say that if bears in certain climates didn’t hibernate they’d either starve, accelerated by their own gnawing drive to fill the void, or decimate their prey thereby assuring their delayed starvation.
Better busy than bored I used to say but a busy bear might just be a prematurely dead bear, one hanging by an elk thread.
The field, forced to fallow, so the bored mind, enduring the extreme diet of hibernation ultimately produces more for longer.
A Field from Afar
The combine shaved wide swaths through the stubble of dried stalks while vapor trails left by now distant planes fought to maintain their integrity before compromising and blending with the ever-welcoming clouds.
The Longing of Leaves
The wind whipped and howled, driving great herds of leaves over and through the mounds and valleys of dormant beds. Occasionally, desperate rogues would buck and twist, riding vertical eddies skyward, eager to reclaim their former glory. They never did. Some, by luck or fate, would find purchase in a screen or gutter but were never reclaimed by the trees, cast off as they were with intention, to spur the next foal of filly.
My Vernal Hope
I've grown accustomed to the transitory nature of my writing highs and hopes.
They don’t follow the quarterly seasons by which I measure my years but loosely mimic them. Some days I wake to see the gray film of winter, feeling brittle and cold. Other days, maybe even the next, I'm stirred by peeping frogs in a shallow pond that was just recently a lifeless depression.
I relish in their chorus, still surprised by my surprise at their sudden presence. Where did they come from, these words and stories, calling out to one another across the roadside ditch and forest oasis? They seem so confident and hopeful that their existence will indeed spawn something real and good and lasting.
Immersed in these moments, I know these pools of wonder will inevitably dry up, be forgotten. But in the moment, my heart sings along.
Whittling
As I get older, I feel less like the knife and more like the wood. Curled shavings drop off and away, leaving me lighter. Less ego, fewer dreams and even fewer friends. The latter more an issue of diminishing effort than diminishing need. I find myself accepting this new reality with a resignation that is more deflated acceptance than humble surrender. My hope is for the knife to be sharp and the cuts quick.