Tonight, I am about as alive as any person can be

I am wiped out. Tired from a day full of really good things, and tired just thinking about all that tomorrow will bring. My job is wiping me out. And that’s okay. Because I know it is, and I know it does, and it just means I have every right to go to bed early tonight.

The autumn night is humming with insects, the sing-song cadence of their sawing wings and their scraping legs a kind of tinnitus, the high pitch of life that is always there, even when it isn’t.

I am reading again. Travelogues by infamous writers. Accounts of Greece and Italy and France and beyond. Stories of New York and California. All of them inaccurate, all of them true, with the kind of truth you can only wring from someone who isn’t often studied in school.

School. Huh. I saw a bumper sticker on my way home tonight from my weekly neuropsych visit — Learning is natural. School is optional. And I read the words of individuals who turn their nose up at the academy.

I used to think I wanted to earn multiple degrees. Find a stable job teaching at a good school — not necessarily a famous one, but one where I could dig in and grow some roots, live the life of the mind and make a name for myself. A name for myself… as though my own name didn’t matter. As though I were like a tree falling in the forest who wouldn’t make a sound unless thousands upon thousands of others could hear me loud and clear.

A name for myself… I was blind and deaf and dumb, struggling to prove to myself that all the things that were “up” with me didn’t make me less of a person… and losing that battle daily. The one who needed most to hear my fall in the forest was me, but I was so busy trying to convince others, I hardly paid any mind to myself.

And all the while thinking “… this inner life, this secret place within, these thoughts of mine, these sensations and confusions and all of it… this is who I am. This is what I am. This is all I have to work with.”

Far from it, I know now. But when you’re 28, you’re so damned sure… and all the while, no one was listening. I thought – no, I knew. No one was listening.

Then I crossed the country. Twice. In a 14-foot rental truck. The second trip found me in a vehicle the same color and size as the truck that blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, within a week after the attack. I got strange and wary looks on that trip. But I made it. I did my explaining whenever necessary. And I kept moving.

Keep moving… that seems to be the key to my live-liness. Not so much like a shark, as a small bird that must constantly eat to keep its energy up. I move with the cycles, picking up speed when the seasons change, so I can make a smooth transition into the next round of sun or rain or snow or wind or whatever.

And the night is my friend. Most of the time.

Tonight,  I am about as alive as any person can be. I ache like the dickens — I swam the other day, wearing an old suit because I misplaced my new one. The old one didn’t fit me well, but I swam anyway. The first time in months. Now my body aches, and my neck and back crack. Just as well. I needed a reminder that yes, I am here and yes, I am alive. Nothing like a little chilly water to wake up the senses. And remind me, there is more to life than warm weather. Warm water. Warm. Cold has a life of its own, and cold has its place, too.

Hungry does, too. And although I’ve eaten my dinner tonight, alone and on my own for the evening, I’m still hungry. Eager for something else. If I have some sense — and I believe I do — I’ll call it a night and make my way to bed, with a book to keep me company till sleep meets me, or my loved one gets home, whichever comes first.

Tonight, I am about as alive as any person can be. And I realize that I need to have people in my life who are as open to LIFE as I am… people who are as welcoming of the full range of human expression, as I am… people who are as undaunted, and as intentional as I am.  People who press out to the limits of what they are capable of, and find out what’s out there, who aren’t held back by what “should be” or “what is” — according to what others say.

This change in my needs for company has been in the making for the past year or so. It’s been stirring in earnest, for the past few months. And over the past weekend, when I saw a bunch of people I used to work with, I realized that the people I got along best with, were the ones who were the most comfortable with themselves, and the most comfortable with risk and reward. The kind of folks who wring what they can out of life — and themselves — and then come back for more. It’s not that they’re not afraid. Far from it. They simply have a tolerance for the experience of fear. And it’s not the ONLY thing they experience.

And they keep learning. I used to want to spend my life in school. Then I realized my life IS my school. I probably won’t be going after those degrees anytime soon. Life is much too interesting, to spend inside the walls of an institution, telling me what to think and say and how to act. The privileges of membership only compensate for so much.

I found this on YouTube tonight:

Scenes to live by.

Amen.

I’m tired.

Good night.