En Fin

We grow tired. Life on the road is exhausting, and there's still so much work to be done. Still, we sit in the sunshine on the Place in Nice, drinking coffee and frenetically writing ideas, and we know how blessed this life is. This is our job, now, and it would be ridiculous to complain about any bit of it.

I look through images on my computer, pictures uploaded only a few days ago. I had already forgotten how beautiful that place was. Already, vineyards, cobblestones, wine bottles, melt into one another and I can't distinguish one from the other. If the life is privileged, the responsibility is to always appreciate it.

We buy a bottle of red, a selection of smelly cheese and smoked meats, and retire to our room. Saturday night on the Côte D'Azure, our greatest luxury is a quiet night in. If this is life, now, I think I can live with it. In the end, after all, I don't know what the alternative would be.

Vagabondery

We spend the morning rebooking tickets, pushing returns to further in the future. Someday we will go home, but not yet. Someday we will have a home, but not now. The Spring sun shines on us and nothing seems impossible. We have another glass of wine, have another glass of giggles. We talk of the future, and the things we see amaze us, scare us, titillate us. We are in awe of what opens up before us.

It seems somehow inevitable. We are at this point now, on this verge of a whole new tomorrow, and it seems the most obvious outcome. Had we been older when we were young, perhaps we would have known. Instead we strained and fought in our different directions, in our individual rebellions. Here we are now, and it feels like home.

Like what else would we do with our lives, but be mad, and live it?

Checking it Twice

Rummaging through Word documents, I came upon one labeled "August Resolutions", a list of which I had no recollection. As I opened it, I was greeted by this sweet reminder of a time not so long ago. When I sat on the rooftop in Brooklyn and looked at the City, my elusive gem sparkling across the East River, towering at the horizon but still so seemingly far away. How could I long for something, when it was close enough that I could touch it?

I make these resolutions for [the city],
because I am here and now I have to deserve it.
Because what is the point of going mad,
if you won’t do it properly?

So easy, to crawl into the nine-to-five routine and stay there, comfortably safe and nestled in its predictability. So easy, to walk these streets without really living on them, to go to bed with American sitcoms and get those coveted eight hours on the pillow. To postpone, to get comfortable, to say Thanks, but no thanks, when Life comes knocking.

"...because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn..."

Tickled pink, I remember why I came. I remember the glowing embers within me that love to live, love to laugh, love to be filled with whatever Madness can be found. And it's a good city to be looking for that. Despite the December darkness, despite the inevitable lull, I take my list and I run head-first, into the New York City night.

2. Say Yes, when asked

Burn!Burn!Burn!

Manhattan was gray today, its clouds hanging low and the light so distant that the buildings faded into the haze. I looked out over the skyscrapers and tried to find the Answer, realizing shortly that I didn't even know the question. How can I be worried when this is my life now? When I have all the power to make out of my life whatever I choose? Somewhere in my body I felt a tingle, and as I stared at the twinkling lights of the New York Times building emerging in the arriving darkness, it spread through my body.

It was the bug. In me, this restlessness, this crazy mad jiggle that makes me impatient, forces me to keep moving, never be satisfied. When I was younger, it was excited fervor, curiosity; I wanted to see, to feel, to burn, and it was all in joy. Now I run like hell just to stay alive, to feel like I am alive. Always chasing that next rush. Why else am I out here, fighting? When I could just as well return to my simple stable life at home. Heaven knows that would be easier.

But it's that rush. It's Life. So I keep it up. Too much to feel, do, experience. I can sleep when I am old, and I will be content to, too. I will say, I have done it all, now I long to lay in my hammock by the ocean and listen to the waves rolling, back and forth, until I drift to my final sleep. I am happy.

Until then, I run.

And when I think of it that way, and I walk home through my dirty, noisy city, I am happy with my decision to come here. I am happy with the madness within me that makes me run. How blessed we are to live, to truly live.

There is no other way. And there never was.

When the Universe Speaks

You must listen.

The fog has lifted from my indifferent eyes. The fort of paperwork and office chairs I hid myself behind to avoid the questions I didn't want to see still existed, has crumbled. The questions do not scare me, and I should've trusted myself to know that all along.

I was tired; I'd stayed too late; and hungry. I just popped my head in to the other office to say good night when the older, wise man who sits there began to regale his tales, the way people do when they have amassed mounds of experience. And they are always interesting, so I listen and smile, but I really was aching to go.

I guess sometimes the Universe just has to slap me upside the head to get my attention.

He told me of learning about Zen Buddhism in Los Angeles in the late 40's. Of taking that knowledge with him to school in Oregon and sharing it with another student, who had never heard of it before but was thus introduced. Turns out, the student went on to become a Zen Buddhist monk himself, and this the man told me humbly and as just another bit of the story. And as I stand there, in the doorway, poised and ready to go, completely unprepared, he asks me if I know of Jack Kerouac. Because this young kid sitting next to him in the college classrom, this budding mad man, was none other than Gary Snyder, in my world more commonly known by Kerouac's moniker for him: Japhy Ryder, zen poet, the original Dharma Bum.

Shivers ran up and down my entire body, my feet went numb, tears welled up in my eyes. It sounds silly now, but that was my reaction. It was just so Big. I had reread the Dharma Bums just weeks ago and been reminded of its beauty, of Japhy's sweet love for the world, of the Bigness and Simpleness of it all.

Jack is the reason I am in this City in the first place. And here I was, talking to a man who was to this day a good friend of a person Jack admired so. It was too big, it was too untouchable. I rambled home through the village and giggled madly inside. On this day when I seemed to lean into the downward spiral, when I was ready to ask what hell I was doing, the Universe reminded me. We get so few chances to live our dreams. I have been allowed to come this far; there is no reason for me not to dive head first into the flames. My heart smiles, I go gladly.

...as I was hiking down the mountain with my pack I turned and knelt on the trail and said "Thank you, shack." Then I added "Blah," with a little grin, because I knew that shack and that mountain would understand what that meant, and turned and went on down the trail back to this world.