Everything went from bad to worse, money never changed a thing --- the song that’s been rattling around my brain pan, I think I stripped the threads.
It’s not even the lyric I’m most prone to think of; it’s probably foreshadowing.
So my daughter got the job in Eugene. Not sure quite how that’s going to work out, I mean support wise, and gig wise it’s a bit scary that micro-biology is a growth industry, but it’s a good thing I’m sure. There’s a friend of mine who thinks it’ll be stressful for me to have the daughter leave. I don’t recall if I shouted it from the rooftops or not, but I meant too, that her moving her wasn’t a good idea in the first place.
My friend is usually right though. If I started typing about it it’d dovetail, eventually, into one of my core philosophies of life in general; it’s easiest and most rewarding to travel light. I forget the context of the quote, I want to say it was from Brave New World but that’d mean I hadn’t forgotten the context, of the unbearable lightness of Being --- I think I misplace the context on purpose. It’s my notion that being should be as light as possible.
Hmmm.
I like to think, and maybe it’s delusional, that I only take on burdens as a question of will. Raising a child or two, for instance, is one of those things. For you childless folks who have been snapped at for your no doubt brilliant parenting advice; that’s what the snapper meant. It’s not that you don’t know shit about the little monsters because you don’t have one, it’s the you don’t know shit about burden until you’ve chosen to sacrifice at least eighteen years for the little monsters well being. Just saying.
My kids are way past that. They are people I love and hold very dear, but I’m done raising them. I expect in a few short years to have very few ties that it would hurt to sever if I needed to or wanted to just go. It’s a lot easier to explain the whole kid/not kid thing than it is the whole need/want to go thing . It’s a necessity of lightness of being.
I don’t expect a zombie outbreak or some decisive battle in the homeland, I don’t sit around and strategize exit strategy’s ( though, yeah, I don’t sit in a room with my back to an opening, but that’s more instinct than paranoia. Ok, paranoid instinct, but still, it’s not pre-meditated.). But, I expect after a thirty year hiatus to return to nowhere in particular and not even be there long enough to kick up much dust.
Reason I even mention the lack of provocation is that the whole survivalism thing has gone from a parlour game to a sort of nagging thought in the national consciousness, like a song stuck in the head. I don’t know how to surf a wave on the ocean or molded concrete, but I’m an expert at traffic surfing and crowd negotiation. I look forward to getting lost soon. And, yeah, on the morbid end of things, I have the instincts of an animal, I don’t want my body near my cave. On the much less morbid end, I plan on still using this body for quite some time yet.
Aw shit. This isn’t weighing heavy on my mind, it comes and goes more like a ripple in a lake than a wave. It’s more the true face of ‘What next?’ I think. For all my missing of my Oregon, I don’t see myself going back, maybe for tax reasons, but that would be so very --- mundane. Maybe practical is what I mean by mundane. I don’t know, I don’t know whether I say this with pride or shame, but I’m kind of reckless when left to my own devices; soon I’ll be left to my own devices.
Again, it doesn’t weigh heavy, almost the opposite. If you want to get from one shore to the other you take a fast boat with a fast engine. If you have some other reason to be on the water you unfurl the sails and fly. I don’t have any shore in mind, but I’d sure like to be out on the water. I’m using a water image but that’s not what I feel with that image; it’s the air. The metaphor of the sailboat on the water is impermanence, a celebratory lightness of being.
I’m just typing here. I have a long couple weeks in front of me; it’s easier to look towards the horizon and day dream.
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