In ten days I load up my 1993 Chevrolet Lumina, sit down onto the driver’s seat, wrap my hands around its blue steering wheel, and motor off into everything. My immediate plans are almost non-existent. I have a meager checklist of things in my mind that I feel I must see. The Grand Canyon’s vacuous, open mouth. Looming redwood giants. The sublime beauty of light-tipped mountains carving themselves out against the horizon. Stretches of desert. Tumbleweed. The West Coast. All of these things are such a ubiquitous part of American culture and dictum that their mention comes without the genuine paralysis of any true recognition. But they have been on my list of necessary sights and experiences for a very long time.
Sure, maybe it’s not much. But those are at the top of my list. I’ve barely seen anything in the world. My travel experience is essentially confined to the tri-state area. In a way, I am so disappointed by this. But I’m aware of myself enough now to focus my perspective in a different direction.
In a way I am extremely grateful for my lack of experience in the world. It’s not very often in people’s lives that they find time to appreciate a dandelion (a suburban lawn-owner’s kick in the nuts) or the sheer brilliance in the construction of any urban landscape (when was the last time you took a second to appreciate what went into your New York City apartment building?) When you are around things so often, you learn to under-appreciate them. Whether this is an evolutionary byproduct or something more cynical doesn’t really make a difference. It is quite often that your most profound experiences of the world are your initial introductions to them.
Since I haven’t seen much of the world, I am like a child. Everything I see will be seen with fresh eyes. The wonder of just the trip, the idea of the trip, is already not lost on me. I may do nothing extraordinary or particularly noteworthy, or I may have the most overwhelming, profound experiences of my life. But whatever I experience on my trip will be experienced for the first time. In an overwhelming barrage. And that’s an amazing thought to behold. I will not know what is happening until it happens. And because of this, I relish the potential, even if I have no events to regale my friends with when I get home. For me, the stories are not really the point.
Since I’ve come to some sort of spiritual consciousness in the past 10 years or so, my heart has ached to feel insignificant. For the past few years, I have worked at a great job with some really great people. But waking up everyday, staring into the mirror, and knowing exactly what events were to unfold? It broke my heart. As much as I try to be, or as much as I forget my true feelings, I am just not that kind of person. Driving to work five days a week, becoming so entrenched in the quotidian lifestyle of paper-chasing that I forget how unimportant a fucked up coffee order is? Milk in my coffee? God forbid. The day is ruined.
So the point for me is essentially this: to remember, as I once knew, how small and insignificant our lives are. And to remember how freeing that realization actually is.
The time I have to live is in a state of constant erosion, and I must fight to build as many castles out of the sand as I can. Memories, like people, will be beaten under the waves, but what is important to remember is that someone, and it might be me, may pause in their walk along the beach one evening, to admire the sunset. And also, without comparing one to the other, to marvel at a citadel made of sand.
3 months ago
