To Wonder and Wander

            I joke that having a house, a permanent address, is not for me.  I would rather own a RV.  I don’t need a lot of space; I’m just one person.  Moreover, I have recently adopted a minimalistic attitude toward objects.  I do not need four different types of soap, but I will tackle that topic on another day.

            Growing up, I was fortunate to have one childhood home.  There was no stress or commotion of moving, changing schools, or learning the streets of a new neighborhood.  Looking back though, it was pretty uneventful, almost stagnant. But that is what the experts say to do, right?  Give kids a stable environment.  So, day to day, my life was pretty normal:  walk the same six blocks to my grade school, come home and make meatloaf for dinner, and visit Grandma on Tuesdays.  And I was content with all of that because I knew when I grew up, became an adult, I would be free to do whatever I wanted and go wherever I pleased and I decided travel was what I was going to do.  Check, please.  Reality check that is.  It is true adulthood comes with freedom, but entrapment lurks around the corner shouting and shaking its finger at you, “You have responsibilities!  Who is going to pay the bills or let the dog out?” 

            I cannot help it, though; travelling is an innate element to my existence.  I love the road, love to travel.  I feel comfortable hopping from one hotel room to the next, living out of my suitcase.  At the end of a vacation, whether it was three days or twenty-three days, I never want to travel to my home base.   Perhaps I am just coming down from a vacation high, but going back to the humdrum of habit and schedule makes me restless. 

            After years of believing I had to stay in one place to make a living, to survive financially, I realized I did not have to conform.  I could make a living, a different lifestyle than the nine to five paper pusher I was, and retrieve my childhood desire of seeing the world and all the ups and downs it had to offer.   Granted, I have not travelled as far as I have wanted yet, but I feel I am making steady progress and hopefully time will be on my side because I do not care if it takes me forty years to stand in front of the pyramids or to savor a perfectly brewed cup of coffee from a diner in Kansas; I am still going to do it. 

Letting One Go, Giving One Up, Is Strength Manifested

            Most of us have given things up whether it was an activity or sport as a child, caffeine during pregnancy, or the supersize french fires for the sake of our cholesterol levels.  Those things may seem difficult at the time, but the effect of the decision to give something up is probably not mind altering or life changing to a great extent; they do not significantly alter the road we set ourselves on for this existence we call life.  We learn to go without the Coke and fries and after awhile the cravings don’t penetrate and tempt us any longer. Fortunately, I’ve never been addicted to drugs or alcohol, so I can’t speak on the personal trauma engendered and subsequent endurance needed to let go of those substances.  For the most part, though, giving things up or quitting is relatively easy in certain circumstances.

            But how does one give someone up?  How does one let go of another totally and utterly completely?  We often say, “It’s for the best.  She will have a better life because you cared enough to give her up.” Or, “You are better without him; he was no good for you.”   After the separation, after the break, we recite these simple statements to get us through the day.  They may be valid reasons but they don’t possess the power to cease the ache that has taken residency in our hearts.  Perhaps time is more powerfully equipped than words in this instance and the banal expression, “Time heals all wounds,” is partially true.  I don’t think time heals the wound (the act of giving one up, the separation), however, it provides distance so the person can heal and construct a life without that other person.  We will realize the moments when we recall him or her and the memories of time spent together are not so relentless in our minds and the pain lessens from heart bashing to a swiftly unpleasant sensation.  Therefore, time helps, but there is another element.  Strength of heart.  How much can we endure?  In the aftermath, can we still see hope and disregard bitterness?  Can we show gratitude and still grieve our loss gracefully?  I think we can.  So, find your strength in your pain.  It’s there.

Common Sense Gone Awry

            “You know, it's like, the GPS told me to go this direction" (NPR.com). These are probably the most common words spoken when one gets lost, not “I’m a dumbass for listening to a machine tell me to drive into a ditch, into a pond, or onto a path designated for pedestrians.”  Navigation systems, and technology in general, are supposed to make traveling easier.  They allow the driver to keep her eyes on the road and not on a large cumbersome map, they assist with impromptu destinations saying so long to the days of, “We can’t go; I don’t know where it is,” they know where the closest McDonalds is located so you can feed your travelling companion the vanilla ice cream cone he so desperately desires, and they offer peace of mind because they have the directions to get you home.  Those are the functions they should deliver each and every time, but alas they, like humans, have faults.

            Instead navigational devices often deliver aggravation and misdirection, which lead the driver to yell obscenities and look like an escaped mental patient to other drivers sharing that particular road.  At this time, envy creeps in because those other drivers – they know where they are going.  Luckily, when I travel I bring maps of the states I’m driving through or stop at a visitation center to pick one up because I did have a mishap with my former beloved Tom Tom.  I was driving through North Carolina and the damn device with a commanding voice told me to turn right.  I was on I-74.  Where the hell did it want me to go, drive through the cement barricade?  It may have been the shortest route to reach my destination, but I don’t think the local government would have been too happy with.  I, of course, ignored it and reached for my map and continued on my way.  That incident was no big deal.  The NPR article, “The GPS: A Fatally Misleading Travel Companion” explores the more serious consequences of blindly listening to a navigation system. 

Lesson: Do not rely heavily on navigational devices, bring maps, ask a human being for directions, and, by the way, while traveling through Death Valley stay on the designated roads.  

The Pains of a Creative Heart

            I met some people this weekend that let me into their private little worlds.   We met each other for the first time in an university classroom, sitting in a circle in hard plastic chairs attached to small table tops, which acted as desks. They unabashedly revealed the effects of suicide, the repercussions of fighting in the Vietnam War, the painful disclosure of a half sibling, and the ache of locked-in syndrome.  I sat listening and amazed at the degree they could open themselves up to me, a complete stranger.  They were not concerned with being judged or thought of as unbalanced beings.  I was privy to such information as one classifying himself as a loner and one being on antidepressants.  All was disclosed casually and with great ease.  They simple wrote and spoke about their lives.  That’s why we were there, to participate in a creative writing workshop.

            I’m used to an academic setting.  The debate over characters’ motivations, the writer’s intentions, the infusion of literary theories, and the social implications are all familiar topics of discussions for me.  However, this type of classroom setting was drastically different and I couldn’t find my place.  Sure, I participated and commented on their writing, but I just couldn’t bring myself to share my story, face to face.  Maybe it was too soon, maybe I wasn’t ready, or maybe my writing was just garbage that day and I knew it and didn’t want to embarrass myself.  Some may say, “But you write and put it on the Internet for any one and everyone to read.”  To me though, that is different.  Being visually present as my prone-to-stutter voice unfolds the story and feeling everyone’s eyes on me is one step beyond comfortable.  If I let people read my work I don’t see their expressions, their emotions and judgments coming through, as they feel my words. 

            I realized during my weekend that everyone has felt judged or embarrassed by something they said or did.  It’s the ones that persist and say, “So what?”  that find admiration at their doorstep.

Say Good-Bye

            The radio station that introduced me to alternative music is going off the air today.  Other radio stations I have listened to have come and gone (103.5, 94.7), but it didn’t impact me greatly because Q101 was still there. Well, now it’s Q101’s turn to hit the graveyard and I and the rest of Chicago don’t have another alternative music station to fall back onto.  Sure, there are other stations (93XRT), satellite stations, mp3 players, and those of us (ME) who still burn cds for the perfect mix, but nothing similar to Q101. 

            This station has been a part of my life since 1992; I was eleven years old.  It was my teacher, my guide, of music outside of Motown and the Top Forty.  It gives me the willies to think about what I would have turned into if alternative music didn’t enter my life at that pivotal moment.  Would I have been driving around, windows down, and singing along to Brittany instead of Gwen?  Scary.  “. . . Baby One More Time” instead of “Just a Girl”?  I have a hard time visualizing that.  I can say definitively, my adolescence would not have been the same with out the solace provided by Nirvana, Bush, and Rage Against the Machine, among others.  Although I’m thirty and have since said good-bye to my childhood and teenage years, the finality and the nostalgia I feel are especially thick today.

In the meantime, it’s www.q101.com for me.