Correspondence 11/9/06: growing out

11/6/06

Dear H,

So I’ve thought for nearly a full minute on the topics I started to grill you about at Cobie’s party last week. This whole wanderlust you’re saying must be acted upon before another year passes. And there’s the Johann thing to discuss, too. Apparently I broke some code of ethics at the party, so it seems my side is (temporarily) chosen and I’ve earned the right to have a little commentary.
But, first. The Coast. Either one.
Well, you’re young. That sounds a little patronizing. But it’s not. It means I agree with you. I did a lot of traveling in the midwest: Mansfield, Wooster, Lexington, Columbus, Interlochen, Toledo, Chicago, then a few trips to New York and other, less impressive destination spots. And then my long-term stride increased just a few inches down to Carolina, and I found my home. Realized I’d been in it for most of my life, and that being out of it was chilly and alien and scraping. My plugs didn’t fit in the Carolina sockets, if you will. But I did find my home. Thankfully, I’ve made my way back. There are good people here. They do things in a way that makes sense, is a tad more honest than you find in most places. They invite you back to their apartment when the bar’s closing and you’re too loud and too hungry to go home and to sleep. Euchre is a valid form of entertainment for several hours, but a penis flute just might show up at halftime.
Those memories, I promise, are not to make you feel guilty, but rather to say thanks. And maybe that you’ll always be a midwestern friend to me. Now that I’ve found my home, I want it to maintain its status quo. That’s in direct opposition to your responsibility to get to know your country a little better. To be sure where, when you’re no longer young and so energetic, you want to be stuck. Roots and all that blather. Spread your bad influence to other young girlfriends of latenight secret sermon writers.
Come to think of it, if I do give my blessing to this great journey you’re to undertake, we won’t have to discuss the Johann issue at all. That could be very nice, considering the main problem I have in talking about that: the fact that there’s so little to talk about. What excuse would I have to wait on line at the post office if not for an overweight letter to my friend who lives five blocks away? Listen. Johann is a very... clean-cut man. You are not. That one needs no more encouragement when it comes to taking wrong routes home, if you know what I mean. The further you run downhill, the further you’ll run up. Etc.
And if you’re just thinking about using him for his pitching skills, remember: he may have studied and practiced pitching every day for years, but you’re not going to throw a no-hitter if your heart’s not in the game. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt as long as you only send him in for pre-season games, and get him back on the bench as soon as the ones that count come around. (Of course then the question becomes does your team have to adjust to a new pace when that happens, but this metaphor’s getting a little too much pine tar on it currently)
And why the letter at all, if I consider this extended vacation your right? Real answer: I like to think on paper. Answer we should agree on: because with my great gypsy past, I can teach you, prepare you, encourage the proper growth.
I spent half of high school and most of the following foggy four years in, respectively, a pontiac LeMans and a kia sephia, leaving my bed empty and taking a place on the floors of tea-offerers across Ohio and Kentucky. After the four years it was on to three or four short jobs full of pathos and sodium in various locales. I can tell you: you’re certainly on a path to discover. I *could* tell you exactly what, but there’s a fair chance I’d be wrong, and a certainty I’d be full of myself. So, I charge you with the task of a book report. But I can tell you to keep your ears open. Say ‘sure’ a lot more often. Be still + accepting. Write me a book report. Not only because I want to continue to hear from you, to know where you’re finding your newest lesson, but because, when you do start to slow down, it’ll be a lot easier to pull that report out of a file somewhere deep in a desk drawer than to take a four-to-six month rest period for the sole purpose of recovery aimed at remembrance.
Accept the bad. It’s out there. Waiting for you to come to it. And you will. Take it into your home, let it have its shower or brunch or let it shed all over your couch, then send it on its way. If you fight with it, it will believe there’s something worth fighting for, and it’ll stick around. It’ll clean you out, and you’ll have to move back to the midwest for to start over. (Not necessarily a bad thing. But I’m going all in on that one.)
And just stop for a moment. There is *not* anything worth fighting for. There’s not one thing that you could possibly be forced to relinquish to the bad that would signal the end of value or learning or character or the magic THE in your life. Let it all go. If you’re really going to send yourself up into the domain of the winds, don’t try to bring along the baggage. (You will, of course. Even if you go into it with no suitcase packed, you’ll soon realize your pockets were inadvertantly stuffed full of marbles and chocolate and peanut butter and banana sandwiches. When the wind asks, allow it to take all of that away.) If you really mean it, if you want to get to the absolute, you have to drop it all down into that vortex you’ll end up swirling above. It’s okay. You will be able to find the things you need later on. The birds do not worry about clothing, and they are provided for. If you get to the place where you are going to go, and you can’t find a thing that you had before you left, chances are good that you and that thing are better off where you’ve landed.
It all sounds like cliche (maybe that’s how cliche got to be cliche, dja ever think of that?). But I’ll commit: if you get to the place where you’re going to go, and you can’t find me, chances are... after a slim volume of book reports, you and me will be better off where we’ve landed.
I’m not so willing to drop you off at school and not walk you in. But nostalgia does have to have a reason to exist. Nostalgia is pain for home. Many dictionaries use ‘bittersweet,’ but as adults now we often consider a bitter taste to be a good thing. Complex, too, and the complex part is valid, but the good is only true in the times when we are conscious, presently aware of the fact that there is a greater world than the one under our gaze out there. At all other times missing you will be a thing subconsciously necessary and subconsciously painful. When brought to the front of thought, both aspects will ring true at once... bittersweet.
So as this emotional correspondent I can say you’ll be the perfect writer’s friend: a 5’8” ball of yin and yang at typewriter’s length. But no one’s a writer 100% of the time. Damned we are for that whole companionship thing. I suppose it becomes a matter of my endurance and your subjection.
None of which is your responsibility. You are for discovery and a kick in the pants. You are for living out the dream, which, despite every attempt by our popular culture to monetize it, still relies on vast stretches of cracked pavement, innocent bystanders willing to act accordingly, and little else. The only other piece of advice is a recycled one: eat plenty of pie, with ice cream if necessary.
And cherish forgiveness in all its manifest forms.

As ever,

T