Beginning Again at the End of the World

So, yesterday was Sunday. On a wave of good feelings after having found some old files on Mom's computer, I took myself into Virginia, down through the canyon of leafless trees alongside Laurel Creek, on through Damascus and into the spreading fields leading to Abingdon. Margaret and Mike and the kids had left earlier that day on a road trip, and the students are off on expedition until Thursday. So with no pressures on deck, I drove off to see 2012, because, and I mean this with no irony, something that always makes me happy is watching the world be destroyed in the most cinematic way possible. Not because I hate the world, but because I love disaster movies and I love special effects, and when they come together this spectacularly I am filled with glee.

So, I'm in the car. And I've finished listening to my lecture series on Monsters, Gods and Heroes: A History of the Epic (which was great by the way, should you want to check it out) and I wasn't in the mood to listen to Regina Spektor which was the musical choice. Earlier that day I had packed up some speaker tapes and cds to send to my friend Chris, who needs them to decide if I'm flying to LA to speak at the convention, and I had found this old blank cassette.

I pop it in, and to my surprise my voice emerges.

Its one of the cassettes I made driving across country from Baltimore to LA when I moved there in 1993. I had picked up a handheld cassette recorder in order to preserve every passing thought I had as I drove away from a well worn life into one that bore no etchings. It seemed monumental at the time, it was monumental. I had been living a life in Baltimore that had taken on a kind of inexorable momentum that was leading me towards a future in which I just couldn't see myself. I was fading out of my own life, vanishing into a murky misty kind of phantom who walked and talked and every day became less a part of the world. At the time I lacked the ability to even know that, to see that, to feel it. I don't even quite remember now how I felt. Choices were made that were not my own, because I had lost the ability to make choices for myself, and I had begun to come awake in a cold cold winter of snow and ice and highways with hard ruts. Thats literal by the way, not metaphor.

So I packed up my car, and headed west. Outside of Atlanta I picked up the handheld.

So, now...16 years later, I'm listening to the young man I was observe his surroundings and ponder his future. To a soundtrack of background music including Kirstie McCall, Erasure, REM, Pearl Jam, The Smashing Pumpkins and occasional snippets of music from pop radio stations he passed along the way, I listened as he contemplated picking up hitchhikers, dealt with boredom, observed passing tourist traps, battled a cold, and in between, thought and thought about his future.

I laughed as I listened to this young man I once was swear not to make the same mistakes again, and I spoke back from 16 years in the future and told him "yes, you will." And I forgave him for those mistakes and forgave myself. I listened as he told me about how he would never get caught up in a job to the extent that it compromised this living of his life. And I said, "Oh honey, I'm sorry. You will." And I laughed. I listened as he told me that he would never again throw away his sense of himself in order to find companionship with a lover. "Oh," I said. "Really?"

He drove on and on. He stopped in Phoenix to visit his brother, and flew with him to the Grand Canyon. He became excited as he saw signs for California, and even more excited when he passed palm trees. I thought about his adventures there. I wanted to tell him that he would make a life there. That he would fall in love there. That he would fall out of love, and that it would hurt, but he would survive even when he felt like he couldn't. That he would be succesful. That his dream of living in a house overlooking downtown LA would come true. It would take time, but it would come true. I wanted to tell him that he would be lonely at times, but it would all be okay. I wanted to tell him that his dream of being a writer would come true in ways he was not expecting. I wanted to tell him to not drink so much. I wanted to tell him to not let silly little things hurt him so much. But I couldn't of course, and I'm glad. Because he had a grand adventure.

He talked about that. He talked about adventure. He talked about how the road trip hadn't turned out to be the adventure he wanted it to be, and I wanted to tell him that that was OK, because he would take other road trips and they would infuse him with joy. And they would be adventures. But more than that, he would have adventures unlike any he could even conceive of. He would find God staring down at him as he sat crying on a rock watching the sun set over Joshua Tree. He would set aside his fears and then encounter their embodiment a few moments later and stand and watch and marvel at the beauty of the pattern on the skin of a snake. He would roam his landscape with marvelous friends, the likes of whom he had always dreamed. And they would hold him up, and stare him down, and make him laugh, and soothe his burning. Such a great life, such a great adventure he was beginning.

Oh, what a gift. What a gift to hear this young man. What a joy to know what lay ahead for him. What a joy to understand how good, how true, how exciting life would be. So I think about my own bumps and bruises, and I think about a man, living far in the future, well beyond 2012, and he is listening to me now. And he is smiling. And he is laughing. And he is remembering. And he is telling me, "Oh, what a grand adventure lies ahead for you. You have no idea!"

--Dan