Memories of the bus crash....

Thank you Sunday mornings. The movie came on. A love story I haven't watched in years. The first time I watched this movie I was jolted during the last scene when he asks her to take him back. Not because of the intense passion, or the acting, but because the bus that I was on pulled into New York city while side swiping another bus. I remember it well. The movie ended as we sat patiently in our seats, a tear grew from my eye, and before it fell I shook off the feeling and departed the double folding doors to ignite a smoke and wait for another ride.

The bus driver yelled at me for having the nerve to exit his vehicle on a busy highway. I told him that he had just hit a bus and perhaps wasn't the best person to be giving orders. He made a threat. I don't remember what he said, but I laughed and tossed my cigarette to the ground by his feet. I kindly thanked him for extending my fourteen hour trip from Maine that day because I now had an extra few hours to sit next to the aromatic portable toilet, between the guy passionate about cheese doodles and the blackberry addict.

The police came, told us we were wasting their time and sent our buses back on their way. Only in New York does a man watching a love story while riding on a bus that hits another bus get yelled at by the driver and scorned by the local police for giving them a hassle.

Then in Vermont, when I finally returned, I told another great story that couldn't have been found anywhere but on the road.

Wherever I go, whatever happens next, I will miss retreating to this little mountain paradise. The hills forced me to forge my own adventures, whether it be when walking up a hill while imagining the crest, or sitting on a bench at dusk waiting for a stranger to walk by and smile while looking me in the eyes. This beauty, this unrivaled human spirit has now been added to the wonderful, difficult to deal with, often spontaneous, and dreadfully passionate package that is me.

The next moment will hold great beauty, true pain, and endless moments for insight, but here and now I am happy with the mountains, with the smile of a stranger, and with the hope that the crest of the hill will make each upward step worth it. It isn't as simple as just starting a new day and believing once again. And although the mountains and smiles have saved me before, today my smile was given by a woman.

Her compassion and love leave me questioning it all, wondering what comes next, and understanding that none of it matters with her by my side. When she smiles her eyes smile too. Her hands touch so softly, and when she exhales with her head on my chest I feel the release and freedom of bliss that could never be found in a mountain moment when traveling alone. A hand tightens, grasping my body, as she breaths in. My lips touch her head gently but my gratitude for the moment goes beyond a kiss.

On the road of life, if we accept that we are always traveling and turning around new bends, we will surely find whatever it is we are looking for. Even if it doesn't last, as moments often fade, the truth that a connection worth leaving it all behind has happened can last a thousand years. As we are human, and destined to die, we can't escape the truth that one minute, one second of our lives can be spent with another in a place that can last an eternity. To be born alone with the truth that we will die alone is not a worry at all for anyone who has been truly alive for a single minute.

Maybe this morning, and the recollection of cigarettes and tears, has given me all I need to let me know that I am exactly where I need to be.

An Honest Life

Maybe I say it because it calms me, takes care of the questions without answers, and allows me comfort in the unknown. But I still believe that we are exactly where we need to be during every single moment. Perfection is always there but our doubt does a good job disguising it.

Where I am now is creating a disconnect that I'm not used to. Believing that I am on a mission to find my purpose in this world, that I am on the great adventure of self discovery, has caused a vast space between myself and all the people I know.

I intended to make this rant come out more clearly than it is. I am distracted by the thought of tomorrow, wondering about the possibilities of today, and lost in a world that is keeping me alone.

Unable to live up to even the smallest of expectations from those close to me, I feel like I am walking alone down a foggy road that will hopefully lead me to where I need to be. I wonder if I am giving up, letting myself down, and just saying that nobody gets it because everything could change tomorrow.

Maybe not. Maybe the combination of finishing college, the sunless Vermont winter, and the plans of traveling have placed me in a mindset that can't be broken.

Either way, it's time to be honest with those in my life. It's time to be honest with myself. I'm leaving Vermont, not going back to live in New Jersey, and going until I find what I am looking for. Each year produces changes, each day gives us a different perspective, but the life that I know is on the cusp of a great revolution.

Maybe I won't find anything other than the realization that I've done it all wrong. It could just be a subconscious tactic that tells me to pursue the unknown, while keeping me from a consistent state of happiness. Then again, I'm not sure that happiness can exist consistently. As life changes with each breath, so do the emotions that accompany each moment.

Life is speckled with great moments of beauty and sadness. The rest is just a series of seconds driven by choice. I choose to wander. It could just be the time in my life, or maybe it is destiny, but I don't think home will ever be a place I stay in for long.

The bright world of possibilities is my greatest love. The wind is my greatest companion. My mind is the world I wish to discover. The determination is powerful enough to take me away from all that I know and lead me on a journey towards a greater understanding. Whether I find it or not, I'll walk all along with hope as my guide.

The winter will end and spring will be reborn. I'll change my opinions on what it all means a thousand times between now and then. Still, this is my way of living life as honestly as I know how. At the end of the day, when I'm alone and wondering,I always find a moment to be okay with where I am.

I don't know much. There aren't many decisions I have made. God and love may remain mysteries that I may never solve. My path could give me great pain but, if all that I've learned is true, the journey will provide me with the freedom to live the dream I can't keep ignoring.

I'm lost and loving it, mad and inspired, determined and distant. Friends grow and change, lovers leave and stay, but the people in my life who know me will understand that I am doing exactly what I must. It's the only way. Inspire others, be alive in the moment, free yourself to every opportunity, and live life honestly. At the end of it all, I'll at least be able to say that I've followed my heart. I hope we can all say that, no matter what, we've done the best we could to be true to ourselves.

Are any of us special anymore?

My computer is loading at the tedious pace of a stoned Vermonter contemplating which album to play before turning on the psychedelic strobe light and wandering into the smog filled regions of the mind.

The plan has hit me and I am growing into an anxious, excited, and fearful beast whose confidence is being slammed down by the story of every dreamer who is forgotten after living the dream. It is now only months before I go. I'm not sure where it will be or why it must happen. What I do know is that I am leaving the frost filled valley in Vermont that I have come to call home.

Years ago, during the time when my mind thought it was developing into a unique system of logic and passion, I found my home amongst the suburban dreams of northern New Jersey. I'll get famous. They'll all want to see my smiling face. And I'll always take the time to sign an autograph or two. Since then I have dreamt and failed, loved and lost, grown and sat back down to where comfort is waiting with a conniving glance that says it is a friend forever.

I'm less naive. I think. Still, there is a bit of me, maybe muddled now with so much time to think, that believes I can do something that so many try do, with honest intention, and fail, or succumb to a life that is less about love and more about plans. Its strange to think about all of those before me who have left and come back with the belief that they took a shot at the dream. They survive in a smile because they can say, "At least I tried."

I'm not sure what the dream is, or where I'll find it. I don't know if I will and all of these questions whose answers lag far behind just top the growing list of "things I don't know". There's captain crunch cereal on my desk, a psychology book about developmental case studies, and an ashtray full of camels and Marlboros. I know that. I can see it. Is everything that is known able to be seen?

Great. Another question without an answer. As if I don't know enough already. Maybe the travels I plan on taking will only grow the expanse in my mind between knowing and wonder. I'm lost momentarily but grounding myself in the amenities of my apartment helps me regain control. Time for a cigarette and more cold black coffee. It's the second cup, or third, but the caffeine is lifting me out of the dismal February mindset that has threatened my life in years past. Time to grow. Time to change. Time to understand that the future is almost here while the present is still pretending to exist.

I can't wrap my mind around it. What will happen when I go? I'll be without much money, if I have any at all, and where will I go? I say I'm heading south, down to Key West, to the backyard of Hemingway where I'll set up a tent covered in flowers and pretend to be another one of the cats roaming his garden. Then what? Well, maybe a coffee shop has some nice baristas, or a bar has some friendly servers who will take me home for the night and provide me with a bed, as though that is what I'll be looking for. The real wonder is whether or not I'll find the social situations that I have required throughout my life to define who I am at any given moment.

For years I have had families wherever I go. There have always been the old friends that answer the phone to my tear filled requests for their company or those willing to listen momentarily to my desires for death. That, I'll always have. A phone card or a collect call, and I'm able to indulge in my own bullshit sadness once again. What I yearn for is to find that in the strangers that I meet.

What if a man on the street sees inside of me what so many claim to feel when I'm around them? What if I am special? What if I am unique? What if I am willing to indulge in a path less taken? What if this path is the same for all of us who wonder too much for our own good? I'm not sure if the strangers will agree with my friends, or if I'll even be able to hide my tent in Hemingway's small garden. I'm not sure if I'll even be able to afford a tent.

Good songs playing loudly on a stereo projected through open airways created by rolled down windows and a leg sticking awkwardly out the freshly carved sunroof, this will happen. What won't is just another thing that I have to wait for. I'm waiting now, leaving the present in the past, and letting the anxiety of what will be come because it fills me with excitement. I might do this and that, but whatever it is I'll do it. I think.

Well, fuck thinking and walking around without a plan. I am still a few short months away from graduating college, a feat which so many said I could never accomplish. If I don't ground myself for more than a moment, I'll forget about the necessary work of now and never graduate at all. That would be a pity. Or would it?

I've dropped out twice, been broke and wealthy, been lost and found, but I've never left my second home for more than a few months. It's time to go and never come back. Tomorrow is another day closer to the spring sun and the final moments of yearning before I hit the gas pedal of the old dented civic and blast my way out of Vermont for the last time. There are so many people here that I love, so many friends in New Jersey that have saved me from myself, and so much I need to still learn about the man I really am or the one that I have been pretending to be. Lost in the mind but home in a moment. I'll go where I need to go, regardless of whether or not it makes me special. The experiences may not make it to the pages of the book I have waited to write, but they will be something, and provide some use. I know that.

How will my parents understand? What about the woman who has captured my heart with her rhythmic passion and wonderful eyes? Will any of them understand why I am gone? Will I? I question the need to go constantly, but I can't deal with the thought of staying. There is a whole world out there that I've been waiting to see. Maybe I won't have money, or a place to stay, but through out the journey I'll be looking for the home that I find on rare occasions when the sun is up high or the darkness lasts for days. The home of the mind, the one we find inside of ourselves, the one that gives us everything we need no matter where we are. That is what I will look for, and, as of now, I have only one primary objective: Make the world smile by being an inspiration to the strangers and friends. So many have said it couldn't be done, and those are the ones I owe the most to. If everyone said things were easy, if no one had traveled to write and spread passion before, and everyone was supportive all along, I'd be bored as shit with the idea of searching for something that I'm not sure even exists.

I'm willing to deal with a moment of happiness, or at least a breath of relief, but I am not done indulging in my delusions of grandeur. Maybe it's a symptom of the mental illness they say I have, or perhaps it's the keen awareness that I am going for it, no matter what, regardless of what form it takes. It can happen. This is America, the home of the American dream, and the place where everyone thinks their so damn special they post their entire lives on the web for all to see.

Let's indulge together. Let's believe that our self expression is worth it. Let's believe, no matter how wrong it may be, that we can change the world. I wonder what would happen if we lived and believed in the dream. Vermont has given me solace and pain, like the unforgiving suburbs of Ridgewood, New Jersey, but all of those experiences have become me. Thanks to Vermont, to the world at large, to New Jersey for it's sense of entitlement and it's drive for an unreal sense of success, to the friends of today, the brothers of yesterday, and the inspiration of those mad enough to call themselves great.

Maybe I will be great. Maybe next February will see me in a far different place than I could ever imagine. Still, I'm here now, and there is work to do. Writing of a different sort must fill the rest of my day and replace the relaxation of a cold Sunday night. It's time to work. No more rest. No more waiting. Dive headfirst into this experience and all the others will work out. I'll try to let you all know what I'm doing more often by regularly writing in my blog because, as I said, I'm still happily stuck in the belief that I am special. I suggest you do the same.