I am going on the road.

14 April, 2006


When I was fifteen I went to California for the first of several times and to this day, regardless of the Coast that I am on, the sense and the feel of it has not changed and will visit upon me at the most unexpected moments. For this reason, when I graduated college a couple of years back and took a trip to Southern California to celebrate and got off of the plane and stepped into that warm delicious air and soaked up the reds and purples of all the great big flowers beating and breathing and just living all over the place, my heart leaped and tumbled as it does with that kind of sensory delight and I realized: California is a state mind. And so it was that I made a decision to carry with me this perception in my heart, and I began to practice what I call perception appreciation, easily done in any setting at absolutely any time: to concentrate on the joy of being fully in the moment, assured by the precision of leafless branches and the scent of smoke on the air mixed up with the cold salt from the river on an otherwise drab winter day, or simply dazzled by the gold light on the tree tops that stretch above the buildings in the courtyard behind the restaurant where I work as the sun goes down, when for a moment I can pause, await customers, breath in the burgeoning breath of spring and allow myself to Joy, to experience the simple and miraculous purity of being alive in this moment...

This is the intro to an essay wrote for a newsletter called The Oregon Dialogue that I created and self-published from January 06 through the fall of that year.   My ex-boyfriend Brandon and I spent a year living on the road, allowing serendipity--literally our instincts--to lead us on a journey through North America.  The harmony of it, the unfolding of one thing leading to the next so seamlessly and each next step being exactly what we needed in the process of perception-changes we were undergoing...it was absolutely undeniable.  The Oregon Dialogue was a result of that in-to-our-own-hearts experience: a newsletter meant to unify people drawn towards a more authentic, meaningful and connected experience in life.   We gathered folks around it.  We got back to Chestertown, tilled a huge organic veggie garden put in an enormous fire pit and I proceeded to do what I do best, socialize and make people feel included.  It was my goal to create a movement around those ideals and we did, catalyzed by sharing ourselves through culture, music, art, all on the local level.   It too extended in to social responsibility and sustainability.  Local agriculture, local goods, farm potlucks and how to be the change you wish to see in practical, fun ways.
 
That trip with Brandon really started in the fall almost a full year before we left.  It started because my blood began to draw and pull, especially when I would write.  It was none other than that: a wordless need to go.  My poems from that time are full of green trees and mountains, of apocalyptic vision and going deep within to recreate, to recreate both me and my outter reality.  They are prophetic, full of dreams of Oregon and the shamanistic encounters that I eventually underwent on the road.

That essay from the Dialogue was about living the moment for what it is worth.   I wrote it in the very beginning of what would become a desperately hard time for me, and I am sure I was trying to write my way in to belief.  I do very much believe that living this moment is what it is about, however the tough part is learning that this moment begins with where you are at, however that may look or feel and not how I think I should be.  So truth is, the appreciation of this moment can be a challenge, especially if you, like me, try to paint it pollyanna-positivity and call it Hope.  That period of hardness lasted almost four years for me, and through it all I left not just Brandon but also my carreer.  I feel differently about hope today as I learned that it can be a false concept.  I think it can, depending on the application, allow us to lie to ourselves, giving way to all forms of righteousness and confusion that roots from self-deception.  Sometimes the bottom line is that the only one who can change your life is you and trying to control, through the false-pretense of forced optimism or even genuine gratitude can and does cause frustration and even depression.  Happiness starts where you're at, but that's about softening and being understanding with yourself.  It starts with accepting the truth about how you're really feeling, doing so without judging you, and in-moment satisfaction comes from this self-acceptance even if its aggravation or hopelessness that needs to be accepted... It starts by owning what you really want, even if you're far far from it.  Not by layering on some optimism, which I learn and re-learn.  Hoping for a better day and doing the same old shit is plain straight victim mentality, even if on the best days we label it martyr and believe it's for some higher good. 
 
There is no explanation if, like mine, you have blood that wordlessly pulls.  I don't have to tell you what it means: the misery of trying to go against the flow.  I don't fight it anymore.  It just is me, and it's a gift to live and feel that deep.  I got rid of all my stuff last week, literally set up a trinket-bauble-clothing-fabulous free store in my living room Tuesday night and let the girls from work have at it.  When I left on my trip with Brandon I always knew I'd be back, I just did. I didn't think I could leave my family, all my cousins, behind.  But now, I'm headed to California.  I might not be back.  Everyone's on skype, and most of them live elsewhere now anyway.  The West Coast's in my blood, it's calling.  I have to listen, and the joy that comes in knowing I am heeding to my own pull is riding me high through my days.