'This immense need to do immense things'
Mar 4, 2006
Transcribed below:
March 4, 2006 | Seattle, WA
Been a long while, it has. Busy moving Timm to the U-District where I am now. Not making any effort to write. Even now I feel somewhat estranged. It’s good not to have a proper “home” anymore. No rent, no key. A place to lay my head. Paying my way but a free place to sleep. Better this way. My time and mental energy has been spent on planning where I am headed next—the elusive future that I’ve known lies ahead of this place. Seattle, beautiful as ever, and still I feel done. Not surprising. Wake up and have no burning desire to be anywhere in particular, anywhere of import. Just me and my carousing, my plans still forming quietly. The eternal debate for it being Eastern Europe or Latin America. I may still do both. I have settled on Hungary for a month to do the CELTA program, which is a good, solid, smart step, a perfect plan. Budapest for a month. An apartment and roommates of international origin.
And some traveling around afterward. Can take in Zagreb, Sarajevo, can head up to Slovakia or down to Slovenia. Can press outward to Bulgaria and Romania. Can even see Prague, of which I actually have little interest. A gorgeous lovely trip. May spend 2 and a half months. Come back, with time to head to Mexico. Wanted to do the Pastors for Peace delegation caravan to Cuba but it’s too pricey—$1500. If I want to head there I’ll go myself or save it for another year. Remaining summer in Mexico. Sweltering. Can still possibly do a motorbike trip. See Ellie in Tucson. See my friends in Redlands. Make my way back up to SF. Danny called me last night and told me Leila is moving to SF… incredible. Sooze will still be there, a great friend and excellent resource for my teaching aspirations, having already gone through all the motions. With all luck, Crystal shall still be there (she was thinking of moving away, of which I advised her not to—for her! But still for me). Lord knows where Brian will be—I should find out. And a whole host of people I haven’t met yet. Good things. And if SF fails me—if I don’t get into my program, if New College is a bad idea or they don’t take me—then I’ll split and teach English somewhere, for which I’ll be properly prepared. I will do it right and be set. As much as I can. So much time has passed!! That’s my lament. It’ll dissolve over time, it’ll slowly disappear, this feeling of regret I keep running from. In the meantime it pervades, eats away at me. It’s the cloud over me, it’s the shape of my shame, and I am ready to kill it and let it die. Rid—
—myself of it and move away from this hanging moment in time I keep orbiting around. My tiny death-burden. My reminder of mortality, of the clock ticking and my own window slowly closing on my life, obliterating my opportunities. At this point in my life, my lifestyle is okay, normal. This wanderlust, this vagabond impulse, this desire to run… developmentally I’m concerned that the impulse will stay, something still needing to be proven, and in time I will not grow from these desires and my lifestyle will appear wrong, out of sync with the norm too much, that I’ll be warped and stunted. I don’t see this ending, this impulse, this immense need to do immense things. This immense desire to feel immense in the world by spreading my little limbs all around it, needing to touch everywhere, and conversely being petrified of having a family life, of finding a partner and getting comfortable. I thought about it now and again, while dying here. That I was growing complacent, getting comfortable in my small little life. I don’t think I have. I had an acute fear of it, and that kept it at bay. Of course, the fear of it consumed me, and that time is over, mentally, but the vestiges are still on me because I am still here. The fear killed me for awhile, but the fear ultimately saved me, being so strong that I could not rail against it but instead let it guide me, guide me back to this comfortable point of being again on the brink of departure. Of unforeseeable possibilities I am opening myself to. Of plans coming to fruition. The fear of what else there would be to do in life, namely grow small—
—keeps me from going very far down that dark path. The bright looming love I have for possibilities, of meeting new people, being new selves, seeing new places, pushing myself toward new things, and then—feeling I am living my dreams as they happen, that I am well-synchronized with my desires, that I truly am my desires—a total fulfillment. That will always be the pinnacle of my fulfillment. The brightness of this lures me into it again and again. It’s the one thing I trust in myself. That if the desire is strong enough, I will follow it through. I have not failed it. It has not failed me. These things are true.
And now I take them with me back out into the streets of the city.