The remnants of a hurricane blow through northern New England leaving the sky cloudy and the ground damp. The temperature isn’t quite cool enough for a bath but I take several anyway to escape to that clearly defined warm space. The endless possibility leaves me at a loss for where I fit into the huge landscape. While my place is so well defined in other people’s minds it is unclear in my own. The empty space of a long weekend extends the uncertainty. So I write to see what I write. In the hope that the formality of the words on this page will reveal something that seem to escape the informality of my mind. The rapid movement of the work week is easier. It leaves few unfilled spaces. Little time to recalibrate my purpose and meaning in the universe. But that somehow is always where I return to over and over, year after year. Given enough time and space the same question reemerges. The mind that asks it may be different, but the question remains remarkable the same. I of course have answers. But none that I choose to attach myself to.
The space is so big. The possibilities so endless. When I lived in New York City the human energy was addictively consuming. Here in Vermont it is the endless expanse of green then provides less guidance and direction. It is space for you to fill rather than space that is filled for you. Then again it may all be only about the navigation with in my own mind. All these externalities may only be convinient distractions. Places to abdicate my responsibility to.
Summer recedes quickly into Fall. I am not ready to let Summer go. In fact I plot to travel somewhere where I can once again climb into it’s casual embrace. To sit for endless hours staring at the horizon at the end of the ocean. To walk with no destination. To arrive at the beach with out knowing who will be there or when I will depart.
The Week After Labor Day
The expansive time and space of the long Labor Day weekend has faded – almost as if it never happened. Where does the past actually go other than taking up some space somewhere in my mind. I’m 36,000 feet up in the sky generating CO2 emisions that I’ll have to offset. The expansiveness has now moved from my mind to the picture outside my window. The sun just dipped down below the horizon. We aren’t heading West fast enough to keep it in sight as I fly in the late afternoon from Washington DC to Seattle. I will then head out to Cortez Island, off the Vancouver coast to give a talk at the Hollyhock Institute. In a few short days I have marched 10 miles in a Global Warming action, met with the head of Labor’s largest union, spent 2 ½ days in a Greenpeace Board meeting and tried to exercise and meditate enough to keep my head in a place that allows me to contribute to creating the type of future that will create a world my three children will want to live in. Beth Orton sings as the clouds go by and I try and empty the emails out of my inbox. It’s hard to always be The Inspired Protagonist, sometimes you just want to sit back and watch the world unfolding in front of your eyes.