I’ll start at the very, very beginning… perhaps the root of my insanity inflicting wanderlust will be made apparent to the observer.
It was a cold autumn day. The bleakness of the naked oak trees in the front yard had yet to craft within me that still life portrait of the emptiness of winter. I navigated the pathways of an immense hallway with doorways that towered to seemingly endless heights, and passed gleaming metal doorknobs that teased my eyes. As I approached my room my three and a something year old mind began to tingle with awe and excitement. I began to experience one of the most significant moments in a human being’s life. Waves of esctasy and joy were washing over me even while the thought was still just beginning to form in my mind. As I stood alone in the doorway of my bedroom I looked to my window and experienced the fulcrum of consciousness . I was beginning to realize that beyond the walls of my bedroom there was a vast new world that stretched out before me. I ran to my bed and clamored up the headboard to reach the window to triumphantly look out into my front yard with this new found understanding. The passing cars were no longer merely things that went back and forth, but things that were going somewhere. My bedroom window became my favorite place in the house after that day.
Many years passed each day becoming less of something that had a beginning and an end and more like a strip of paper who’s ends were taped together. Nightmarish caricatures of my life resembling circles began to haunt my dreams. At first these dreams only confused me. They left me with an awful sense of dread that followed me through the day long after waking, but with no clear idea why. My mind dull from years of apartment, sleep, factory, apartment, rinse, repeat, slowly started to piece things together as the dreams became more vivid. I tried moving out of my lonely one bedroom into a two across the valley with a new found friend. I washed away the eerie memories of the nightmares at the local bar with my friends. However the revitalization the change in scenery provided proved to be only transient. During the evenings I found my way once again to my bedroom window, but now the passing cars went back and forth.
It resembled something like that analogy of boiling the frog in a pot of water. It began gradually enough that I was able to forget about the pot, the water, and the range top altogether. The gradual incremental changes in temperature were easy to ignore by rationalizing the discomfort with the imprisoning logic that permeates society. I had a good job, I had a roof over my head, I had money, this is what life is all about, and so I was to be content, feel lucky, and continue buying the crap they said I needed. The excuses increased in proportion to the heat that was draining the happiness from my life. Excuses as to why I should keep my job, reasons why I should be happier, the promises I made to myself to change my life in the future all proliferated with heat. I sat in the pot convincing myself how fortunate I was as the flesh began to peel and flake off my body. I was fighting a loosing battle with the chronic depression I had once conquered. My performance at the workplace I had once dominated began an unrecoverable downward spiral as muscle tissue began to loose it’s elasticity and detached from my bones. Until I was but a skeleton dragging myself around the circle that was my life.
It was in the first week of Jan 09 when it happened. I had been laying awake in my bed for hours unable to sleep. I was reflecting on my life and trying to understand where I was headed when suddenly the realization that my youth was in it’s golden years struck me so hard that I nearly bolted upright in bed.
To be continued…
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