Catching Signals That Sound in the Dark

There is a contradiction here somewhere, see if you can spot it.
What started out as a simple journey to Target to use up the last of a gift card a friend had given me turned into much, much more.
I rode along the bike path overlooking I-205, all the cars and trucks gliding along down the hill from me. Nick Drake sang softly to me. Dandelions dotted the path on both sides, and above me, the most incredibly blue sky. A perfect day for riding.
I got to Target and looked for Cadbury eggs. No luck. People seem to swarm upon stores before Easter is even past to claim them all... ah well. I finished my other business in the store and returned outside. It is curious how stores like Target, Circuit City and the like never have bike racks in front of them. I guess they assume no one rides to such places. On one occasion this gave me reason to actually take Lyra inside a Circuit City with me, which was fun. She usually gets left outside; I could feel her excitement.
I rode away from Target and back along the I-205 path. The album was progressing, and I rode back towards home. When I reached the exit, I decided to try exploring a bit rather than head straight home. I knew there was supposed to be a cemetary somewhere around there, the Willamette National if I remember right. Probably a military graveyard like the one seen in Harold and Maude, or the one where my grandfather was buried. Rows upon rows of identical white markers, stretching out forever. I wanted somewhere to sit in the shade and read. A friend had recently bought me a copy of Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund, and I had become quite taken with it.
The road opened up to the right, and all I knew was that this was the general direction... I rode a ways and the path began to wind uphill... always off to my right were trails leading into what looked like paths through woods. I asked a man waiting for the bus which way the cemetary was. His English was poor but he repeated 'cemetary' back to me and gestured up the hill a ways. I thanked him and kept on.
The hill grew steeper and I shifted gears and kept pedaling, starting to sweat. There were trees everywhere, I felt as if I were nearing a forest. On my left I saw a large church. I kept riding, the road winding around and around, and then I found it. Or at least, I found something.
Lincoln Memorial Park was not what I had been searching for. But there it was, a cemetary built into the hillside itself, cement paths winding themselves among the tombstones and trees, going up up up. I rode and rode, climbing. It went on for what seemed like an eternity, but I know it felt that way simply because it was so steep.
Halfway up the hill I passed their mausoleum, a giant white building. I stopped inside for a moment, and left almost immediately; the air smelled dead and dank. Stale. I wanted to feel life today.
I kept riding up, and finally got near the point where I saw no more hill rising above me. I was almost to the top.
When I finally got there, I found a gazebo-like structure, a perfect resting place. There were plots and graves even up here, and countless trees and squirrels and insects. I parked Lyra by one column and sat down at the opposing one, taking off my pack and pulling out the book.
I read, and wrote, and breathed. It felt so peaceful be up so high, with a clear view of most of the city stretching out before me. There was no one around for miles in each direction. I read and looked around and reflected. I am grateful that more people don't choose to take comfort in the serenity of graveyards. There was nowhere else I could have been so completely, wonderfully alone.
Life came at me and overwhelmed me. Maybe it was reading Narcissus and Goldmund, maybe it was the sound of the wind in the trees. But I felt life filling me up, and I felt joyous and calm and utterly present. I wrote a few pages, and sat leaning against the column, receiving everything and marveling that life was so impossibly infinite and wondrous.
You see, for the last several weeks I've been feeling extremely disconnected from real life, giving in to excess time on the MacBook Pro and texting on my cell phone. I've felt more and more cut off from myself and my ability to breathe and speak truth.
When I sat there today, it came flooding back upon me like a great wave. Life! I am here. I'm reading a book. I like the trees and the quiet. How fucking wondrous it is to be alive.
Before I left I wrote a note to myself, asking how I might be able to retain this sense of calm and clarity when in my day-to-day life, how to remember to just be, and be amazed. I didn't have an answer.
But having felt it so strongly, I know that I will not forget it.
I put my things away and suited up for the ride home. Clicked on Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and set out. The way up had been an excruciating uphill climb.
The way home felt like flying.

What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all round the sun
And when we meet on a cloud
I'll be laughing out loud
I'll be laughing with everyone I see
Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all

Turn on the Bright Lights

I stand at a point in my life where the next step I take can be in any direction. I can do whatever I please. Contemplate a career change, a new house to live in. I can take the time to ask myself: What do you want to do now? Of course, I could fall back on everything I’ve done before. I’ve become quite proficient at mindlessly steaming milk and smiling at people I hate. I can sleepwalk through coffee jobs. It’s become automatic. I can do it.
But I could also do something new.
I stood in the shower this morning and felt overwhelmed. Flooded with thoughts. Am I not terrified? Not full of glossy resolutions and slick, streamlined blogs? I realize I spend a lot of time attempting to present myself as being very cohesive and together. Yet now more than ever it feels foolish to even try. It keeps me from trying anything new. There’s no room for falls and experimentation. I whittle each movement down to a presentation that has a message, a question, a bit of wisdom. Fuck that! I have no idea what to do now.
It frustrates me how there will be times when you are filled with ideas for things to do and write and try and be, and then, almost as quickly as they came, they are gone. Moreover, they always come at times when you’re not able to capture them. Like in the shower this morning. I sat down at my computer again and whoosh, almost entirely gone. I struggled to get down what I remembered. Things always come to me at inopportune times, like when I’m riding my bicycle and listening to my iPod, or when I’m gazing happily at the stage watching a show. Can they be analyzed, these varying moments that bring such possibility?
The other day I lay on my back in Ladd Circle looking at the sky, brilliantly blue and speckled with clouds (what kind of clouds are they? It occurs to me that I cannot name almost anything in nature. Yet I am semi-encyclopedic in my knowledge of music. This is wrong), and I felt really small. Not in a bad way, just small. As if looking up at the overwhelming hugeness of the sky was simply giving me proper perspective again. Things seemed to not matter so much.
Could I not take this moment in my life, where I am bound by nothing, and really invest the time to take a fresh, intelligent step? To re-think everything I’ve valued and done so far? Isn’t every moment good for that, and aren’t I just being lazy and simplistic by needing such a moment to ask myself what the hell I’m doing?
Well, yes.
Nonetheless, that’s where I find myself. Asking a lot of questions and feeling afraid to try and answer them. Maybe it’s simply the overwhelming silence, the space afforded by having no job and no obligations, that has filled me with such terror. I have all the time in the world to do….what?
I could snap into action tomorrow and find some job that I love. Shannon put forth that I’d do well as a music supervisor. It sounds like a dream job, but for the fact that I have no contacts in this town or any other, only an obsessive love of listening to and collecting music coupled with a high-speed internet connection.
But I could find something if I set myself to it. I could find some job that didn’t fill me with disgust and drain my energy and make me feel more and more isolated from my fellow man. Some job that would cause me to look back on the past year of my life and think did that really happen? Did I really put up with that for so long?
I could do it. And I could take the time to learn the names of things. Of clouds and trees and that amazing dark blue bird I saw arching its wings majestically as I rode along the Eastbank Esplanade last week.
I could do all these things.
But resolutions are bunk. The future is unknown and undetermined, or so I believe. But that’s just one more question I can ask myself. It’s a fucking mess, and that’s just how things are most of the time.
Don’t get the impression that I’m pessimistic or overly worried. Really, I’m just musing aloud. I just watered my little basil and garlic plants that Shannon gave me, and put the kettle on. The garlic has grown visibly just in the last few days. It makes me smile.
Spring is here. The robins are returning to the world. I am in love.
It’s up to me now.