I actually wrote the following post some time ago, but I have not yet posted it to this blog. I was trying to make a sort of professional blog, but I have abandoned that pursuit. I have decided that I will just make this a miscellaneous blog; should I ever want to reference my blog writing, I will, hopefully, by that time have a website courtesy of some friends who do web-design--boosting the professionalism of my portfolio while padding their portfolios with another qualifying project. Collaboration is wonderful.
Anyways, I am on the verge of a new adventure in a familiar setting: I am planning on returning to Ann Arbor to embrace certain comforts. One of those comforts being the woman I love. Now is as good a time as any to reflect on what it was like to feel alone while embarking on an adventure to an unfamiliar but at-the-time-promising location.
I have enjoyed Portland (PDX), and I continue to enjoy its fruits: good coffee, unique beers, supportive camaraderie, mild winter, constantly green foliage, free public transportation, etc. Portland is not for me right now, though. My heart is elsewhere, and I feel as thought I am denying my passions by trying to force myself to find a job here.
Fear not, I head to Ann Arbor with cautious optimism (and zealous ambition). I will need to find a job there. AA will not be the same it once was when I was benefiting from the glories of the University's motherly embrace. But there are people I love and streets I know. I need that after my most recent adventure in PDX.
Enough preamble! Here is a brief photo-essay I created en route and upon arriving in PDX. Thank you to the wonderful people who have welcomed me in PDX, and thank you to those who have allowed me to come to realizations about myself at my own pace.
A cold snap has bid me farewell from my parents' house in Denver. It would have been better timing if the temperatures dropped tomorrow. Now my cloth-sided Pumas have absorbed melted snow, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to warm my icicle toes. If I turn on the heater, a burning smell will flood the Jeep; unless I turn off the radio. I try low-heat. Wet socks on or off? Off. How will I dry them? I drape them over the dashboard vents. I feel a draft on the bottom of my feet. The Jeep's body is nearly rusted through. The foliage is shifting from pine to juniper. I'm hitting New Mexico with one foot on a heater, two socks on the dash, and only a vague sense that I am going somewhere.
Route 66 outside Santa Fe, New Mexico: After "Almost Cut My Hair" by CSNY, I kill the engine to hop out for a photo of the red mesa in the distance. A setting sun bounces light off the clay faces, but I feel no thermal reflection. It's still December in Santa Fe.
Being on Route 66 forces me to consider the meaning behind road trips--my road trip. Thirty-some-odd-years-ago, my dad hitchhiked here. It was once safe to hitch. Now, it's not.
I sometimes wonder if paranoia like that of hitching aren't part of the zeitgeist, but I don't have the courage to test these limits.
Others told me I was courageous for declining my Peace Corps assignment in Rwanda. I agree, but sometimes I don't. What could have been if I could have seen past my concerns for security, ethics, roles, etc. ad-nauseum. Maybe I had the fortune of being courageous regardless of my decision.
Can one be courageous if he or she doesn't feel courageous?
Questions about how to find comfort ring through me like Neil Young's echoing pitch. So much of the quintessential road trip is a path to self-discovery or self-uncovering. I like to travel, so I'm traveling. I like to take in as much as I can, so I'm driving. I like being with friends, so I'm moving to live with one of my best friends. I like the nature, and coffee, and fresh food, and beer, and bikes, and public transportation, and thrift, and innovation, and liberal minded people, and diversity, and hiking, and wildlife, and whatever, so I'm moving to Portland.
I think I have a strong sense of self regardless of the part of my identity represented by my weak Jeep that's creeping slowly towards the junkyard and regardless of this legendary southern road that acts as an artery of romantic adventure.
The "road trip" is so stereotypically about a search or an escape.
With a failing economy and pressure from some to excel and pressure from others to explore, I'm searching for somewhere quiet where I can process or where an answer will be readily available on a silver platter and accompanied by a glass of wine and a hospitality suite--all paid for by the justices of the karmic courts. I smile for the timer on the camera.
While living with my parents and without any social outlet, I felt all too familiar with the depressingly overwhelming inundation of contemplative silences. Too much isolated reflection in the suburbs leads to feelings of hermetism, but without the benefit of integration with nature. I'm escaping raucous isolation.
But, I'm well-aware that my finances will probably run-out. And, I'm well-aware that my path may bring me back to my parents' home.
Maybe I'm searching for confidence in the arbiters of karmic justice. I've worked hard and ethically.
A shiver and a sigh. I look back from the mesa to my Jeep. It's no warmer in there than out here.
I have to be in Flagstaff by nightfall. Time to get off the scenic route and back on the interstate.
Outside the Mojave Desert, California: It seems to me that Andrew Bird's "I'm in a Lull" could echo through this valley and off the backs of every gila monster.
The morning after I couchsurf in Flagstaff, I discover my Jeep is dead. Another jab at my liberty to roam freely. My host (who is sporting a Ponce de Leone facial hair revival) helps me secure a mini-van to finish my pilgrimage to Portland. He pats me on the back and wishes me luck.
I rumble on in my mom-mobile.
Balboa Park, Los Angeles, California: I find comfort in reconnecting with a cousin who I haven't seen since before she was pregnant with her now four-year-old son.
Reassurances that my roots exist matches Sly's "Sing A Different Song"; I'm out of my woods and making a leap of faith forward. I'm moving.
Big Sur, California: I take each challenging curve to the sounds of Coltrane's "Giant Steps."
Sequoias bend over steep cliffs and towards a sun that peeks through looming rain-clouds.
The air chills as I move north, and I am now far from the hang-gliders who soared with Soullive over Moro Bay.
Mt. Shasta, California: I complete a 400-mile, non-stop push to the Cal-Oregon border as Andre 3000's "Favorite Things" falls into silence. A necessary bathroom and lunch break allows for reflection.
Last night, an old friend confessed his inner tumult and slight cynicism for his role as a teacher in Oakland. I feel a similarly optimistic cynicism.
A certain clarity emerges. How have I forgotten my passions for activism, for spreading knowledge, for the power of pedagogy, for creativity.
Maybe I'll find something in this line of living in Portland. Maybe I'll wait tables. At least I can achieve a certain peaceful silence in my mind. The Rockies' chill is behind me.
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