Diffused Indirections or "I'll Die Trying"

When I read the book, the biography famous,
And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life?
And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?
(As if any man really knew aught of my life,
Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life,
Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clues and indirections
I seek for my own use to trace out here.)

- Walt Whitman

To go forward is to die. To stand still is also to die.
Better to go forward and die.

- West African Proverb

I was looking back at some of my very first posts here, back when I was committed to writing far more often than I seem to marshal myself to doing lately. It’s funny, as I find satisfying creative theatrical outlets, I am less unsettled, and thus need less the writing outlet that I used to. Anyway, I came across this and laughed. I laughed because for all the growth that I know has taken place within the hallowed halls of my head this past year, no matter how much I feel a million miles away, I always seem to be saying the same old thing. Even I start to recognize the same old story after telling it enough.

What is it about the quarter life mark that instigates crisis? I think there's a confluence of events in the mid twenty range that starts a ball rolling. Add up the end of the idealistic college era along with the beginning of "real" adulthood with a dash of regret about choices (not) made and one produces a strange unsettledness. Unless that's just me.Oh twenty something ennui. You remind the best of us of all we're capable of and then sometimes strand us on the shores of desire with no ability to get to the other side.

I find that at this juncture I've got just enough know-it-ness to grasp a sense of everything I want/need to do to get where I think I need to go. But, that middle road is misty and unclear. Generals stand out in sharp definition while details remain murky. I know what I want but how do I get it? I can recognize it when I see it, but how do I make it come into view? For career, the straight shot of schooling is no longer the immediate answer, though it is often the default, and even there, one no longer finds the simple immediate give and take of previous eras of ones life. In love our combined sets of luggage have only just begun to weigh enough that they periodically have to be set down. Friendships are no longer a given of one's environment, new people do not necessarily waft in and out and those that do may not have that first day of kindergarden need to glom onto others. It's a weird dance of needing to plant but not wanting to settle.

It's that part of existence that calls one to think of their life as a plate of food. A plate that while still more than half full has been eaten at a blinding speed. It's when you start to think about trying to slow down and paying attention to what you're eating. "Crap!" you think, "I've already taken in some of the best part and I didn't even realize it. Do I try and save the best for later, or do I acknowledge that some things in life might start to grow cold and that it will never taste as good as it does now, so better to strike while the proverbial iron is proverbially heated?" And perhaps it also challenges one to acknowledge that the half empty plate is closer than we might wish it to be. So many mixed metaphors pile one top of each other, miles high. We're collapsing under the sheer weight of it all...

But, the secret I'm slowly discovering, is that it's really in the minutae that this life begins to shape. Life these days has become a series of moments, of details and arbitrary choices. What I think about at the end of the day, week, year are the unexpected hug from a person I hardly knew, the feeling of exhilaration in leading a rehearsal, and the baked brie ooze in the shape of Italy. A huge part of me is afraid to imagine that the ooze is all that I'm taking away from life. "I need to stop!" This voice in me says, "I need to change the world! I need to drop everything and go somewhere else and... LIVE! " But the other part says, "Look man, Italian ooze is better than no ooze at all. Maybe the living is in the ooze as much as some foreign clime or epic trek. " And if I really enjoyed the ooze, if it made enough of a mark for me to spend a paragraph on it, then ok. I came, I oozed, I left, and maybe that's enough.

The point is that I don't know what my life is. I definitely don't know what all I'm going to do with it. But I can't get caught up in the "not"ness of whatever I happen to be doing. No one can "not do." And when I get too caught up in what I'm not accomplishing, I only end up standing still accomplishing even less. I can only continue to move forward, getting closer to the dying, eating the food in whatever order makes sense at the time. Which is exactly what I said months and months ago. I'm a veritable time machine. Tell me I'm Einsteinian: theoretically relative, relatively theoried,always simultaneously moving forward while maintaining a constant state of uncertainty.

So in honor of that old post, I put up some judiciously contrasting quotes and followed with my standard introspective and slightly self-indulgent musing that, as per usual, says I really have no idea what I'm running towards, but at least I'll move forward in my way, if I can figure that out, and die in lieu of standing still.

Stinky Cheese

I am out of a job.

Yes, despite my double bachelors from a relatively prestigious college, one in a hard science no less, I was released from the employ of a peddler of cheese. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

The funny thing is, while I put up a stink and demanded my rights, protested my downsizing to the high heavens and made the fat cat boss feel pretty bad about his squashing of the workingman, I probably should have been released long ago. If the cheese masters had even the remotest idea about the things that went on while I was under their umbrella and brought it to my attention, I couldn't really have fought. But they didn't know that, and the reason I got laid off wasn't a very good one.

I love to feed people. It's an offshoot of my general love of food as a concept. But somehow sharing that love with others makes things feel extra special. So while I reigned the steeds of the Italian Market, I invited those relatively near and dear to come and sit and have a sandwich or a slice of pizza, at little or no cost to themselves. It felt a mere extension of the policy in which employees were allowed to eat and drink whatever they might lay their hands to while working. A policy that was stretched to include non-working hours as well. In short, let us guess that I have not really bought groceries in a little over a year.

So it seemed only the logical next step that I ought to spread the bounty to the little folk, the starving artists of the city of Philadelphia. Joe Hill, a famous labor martyr, said to strike at the boss man every chance you got. One coke, one baguette, one hot roast pork with broccoli rabe at a time, I was doing my part for the united workers of the world. And I can only guess that the higher ups couldn't have been hurting that badly as things went on as long as they did.

But to the present. As they say, all good things must come to an end. The very day of my unceremonious release, done with no notice immediately after the holiday season, a friend and I remarked on how very much I should cherish the extremely cushy nature of my service industry career. My own personal form of Robin Hooding now over, I am surprised at the lack of emotion I feel towards this loss. But thinking it over, I suppose I've expected this to come for some time now, even if not for this reason.

Yea though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of the Cheese Shop.
I will fear no hunger; For I will find other delicacies;
My pan and my stove, they comfort me.
Unused by my hand in the presence of my now enemies;
Thou will now be anointed with oil; My pot will again runneth over.

It's the end of an era friends. Let us bow our heads in a moment of silence.