It is crazy and more than a little depressing for me to realize that I checked out of PPD 30 days ago. I have now been out two-thirds of the time that I spent trapped inside, and I have to say that the time outside has flown far far faster than life in the slammer. This is not surprising in the slightest, but looking at the future through an inmate's pace of life led me to establish unrealistic expectations for the month of August.
Given the discrepency between what I wanted and what was, in fact, possible, I guess I actually held to my goals closer than might have been expected. Maria, a friend from my days at Macaroni Grill, was one of the first people to say she wanted to hang out after I got out of PPD, but we only spent time together this past Tuesday, because I have simply had so few free evenings.
For the first week after I got out, I continued my morning ritual that I had wanted to keep up out of PPD, and it was as wonderful as I expected it to me. I got up earlier than I had to, and, after a brief morning run, I walked down to Clementine's where I bought a paper, a bowl of oatmeal, and a cup of coffee, then read the paper and completed the crossword before walking back to my apartment to begin my day in earnest. However, the surprising part is that this two-hour routine held up as long as it did. I think it was the first truly late night out that did me in (3 or 4 in the morning).
Now, here I am, a month later, and I don't know really where the past month has gone. Of course, Sara, my sister, and I went to the Grand Canyon and spent three days hiking to the bottom and back up, which was awesome, but not exactly for the obvious reasons. (More on that later, maybe.)
I remember being extremely unhappy at one point on the drive back from Flagstaff to Austin, thinking, "Why did I just do that if nothing ends up being any different?" I realized that if I just did it for fun, there are many things that would have been funner (in the classic sense of the word). Things like shooting myself in the foot. And I was desperately afraid that after a few days of refining fire, I turned out to be only made of iron after all, and rust was already setting in. It's hard to explain my frustration on that point, so I'll quit trying. Of course, as I explained the trip to friends, I began to realize that it had been a good thing, and more than just entertainment. I turned out to be stronger in ways I never knew and weaker in ways I have always known, but chosen to ignore.
In the end, my relationships with Sara and Katie will be stronger than our squabbles and differences, even if we ended the trip a little more distant than when we started it. I realized that I am a man and remembered that I am still a boy and that will end up being a good thing.
But I've had the same fear about my time in PPD. "Why did I just do that if nothing ends up being different?" If I did it for the money, then I now have no cash to show for my efforts; several bills and debts and a car later and I'm basically where I started. I must have done it for the experience itself - I said so all along - but if a month after checking out, life, and my outlook on it, seems little different than when I checked in, why did I waste 42 precious days of my life?
I cut off my hair a couple of days ago, and saw someone in the mirror that I didn't know. I assumed it must have been me, because I didn't recognize him while everyone else seemed to know him quite well, saying simply, "Whoah, nice haircut," instead of "Who is this strange-looking man before me?" as I said to myself.
I realized in that moment that I am not a child. I saw it, maybe for the first time ever. I saw it in my eyes. As I looked at a face that I wasn't familiar with, nearly hairless, not yet my own, I saw it from a few feet further away then I normally do, and I realized that it was not the face of a boy.
I saw time in my eyes. Pain and exhaustion and joy and peace all existed simultaneously in these orbs that I was slowly realizing were my own. I saw too much worry and brief moments of faith that made it all okay. I saw the energy and excitement of youth (which I hope I am a long way from losing) tempered by the lack of innocence that experience inevitably causes.
And looking at myself, I realized that I really am on a journey, and I am a long way from where I was ten years ago or one year ago or even six months ago, but I'm also an incredibly long way from where I am headed, which - to steal a zen buddhist idea - is nowhere. I am still traveling to nowhere.
So I decided to keep blogging! Because it helps me to write and to imagine that someone is reading. Because I'm not the only one journeying (in fact, we all are). Because I still have to say something. So I'm back on the site. I think I'll try to post about once a week.
Let the race begin!
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Day 43 - The Last Post
I am free today. Crazy. It really is crazy. Have you ever heard stories about people who grow up living in the jungles where the trees are so close together you can't see more than 10 feet away from you? Have you heard the story about the ones who come out of the jungle and stand on the savanna where you can see all the way to the horizon? Those people find it impossible to make their eyes see that far. They can't judge distance at all. The beetle on a branch 4 feet away and the elephant 4 miles away are the same size, so - to the jungle-dweller who never learned perspective - they must be the same size and the same distance away from him. I've heard of someone who spent a year in the jungle in the Peace Corp. Just a year. But when he came out, even though he knew from growing up about perspective and vast savannas, his eyes physically found it difficult to process great distances. Focusing on distant objects was difficult for a few days, because his eyes were so used to everything being very very near.
Well, PPD wasn't quite like a jungle where one could only see ten feet, and I was there for (comparatively) very little time, but I was surprised today to find that, in some small way, I could identify with that difficulty with perspective like the jungle-dwellers in the savanna. Driving from my parents' house to the bank, I couldn't concentrate for a few minutes on the cars in front of me! The curb would be in focus or something lying on the dashboard while the objects I was actually staring at, the ones moving quickly, were blurry, like they were in the background. A few times, the part of the scene in focus bounced around, like my brain was trying to figure out what of the myriad things around me was important enough to focus on and couldn't decide on one value.
I would hardly call this physiological as much as psychological: I was just overjoyed to be in the great big world and uninterested in the intense focus required while driving. However, the sense that the world is actually very very enormous was definitely awe-inspiring. To see down a straight road until the hill's horizon, to see clouds before me larger than mountains, to see the river, sharper than the most expensive TV... All this forced itself on my scattered attention, impressing on me the immense and amazing nature of our world.
Eventually, this too became normal, and I was able to focus more easily on the traffic around me, zooming in on the things that "mattered". That's safer, I guess, but if there ever were an "oceanic feeling" of being part of something much much bigger than the material and human and mundane world, it was in that moment of realizing how much bigger our material world is than we mundane humans ever give it credit for. It's probably a good thing that the feeling would fade, because it's not a bad thing to know that the world is bigger and more important than I perceive it right now to be. To remember a time when everything was grander. If I did not come out of it, I might think that I finally understood nature and mankind, but even then, it would be a long way from true. I would be in the same place as I had been in before: sure of myself and my relation to the world. But I know that the world is bigger than I think it is, because I remember perceiving it as bigger than I think it is, so I know that there's a good chance it (and therefore me, as part of the living ocean of spirit) is even bigger than that experience of grandeur.
While he was driving me home from PPD, I told my dad that I felt a little bit like the people coming out of Plato's cave, sensing a big world full of light and colors and more than shadows. It was sort of a joke, but also how I felt. By the evening, I had fallen back into normal life. But then it is the job of Plato's cave-dwellers - the ones who find the light - to come back into the cave and try to explain the light to those still trapped.
I fervently believe that the real world, the world of perceivable material and invisible spirit, is to the world which I perceive as the small world of PPD is to the outside world. If not larger.
And now I am done! I'm tired. I am in my own apartment about to sleep on my own bed. I could talk a little bit more about what the past 42 days have meant to me, but I won't. I can say easily that it meant more to me than money. I'm not sure how to express exactly what I have gained from 42 days of separation and near isolation, but it is certainly more than a paycheck. And now, I have to become normal again. Or something like it. I have to go through six weeks of piled mail. Pay bills. Try to save my nearly dead lily. Because that's life. And I kind of like it.
Whoever you are, if you have been following my daily posts for the whole of my study, thank you very much. I've never been very sure who - if anyone - was reading, so I tried as often as possible to act as though this blog would be read by no one except me but could be read by anyone with a computer. I appreciate you hanging in there with me through the lonely days and judgmental days and exciting days. I'm eager to see you soon and talk to you face to face, in person. If you've been reading, call me up or send me and email and let me know!
Take it easy, friends.
Well, PPD wasn't quite like a jungle where one could only see ten feet, and I was there for (comparatively) very little time, but I was surprised today to find that, in some small way, I could identify with that difficulty with perspective like the jungle-dwellers in the savanna. Driving from my parents' house to the bank, I couldn't concentrate for a few minutes on the cars in front of me! The curb would be in focus or something lying on the dashboard while the objects I was actually staring at, the ones moving quickly, were blurry, like they were in the background. A few times, the part of the scene in focus bounced around, like my brain was trying to figure out what of the myriad things around me was important enough to focus on and couldn't decide on one value.
I would hardly call this physiological as much as psychological: I was just overjoyed to be in the great big world and uninterested in the intense focus required while driving. However, the sense that the world is actually very very enormous was definitely awe-inspiring. To see down a straight road until the hill's horizon, to see clouds before me larger than mountains, to see the river, sharper than the most expensive TV... All this forced itself on my scattered attention, impressing on me the immense and amazing nature of our world.
Eventually, this too became normal, and I was able to focus more easily on the traffic around me, zooming in on the things that "mattered". That's safer, I guess, but if there ever were an "oceanic feeling" of being part of something much much bigger than the material and human and mundane world, it was in that moment of realizing how much bigger our material world is than we mundane humans ever give it credit for. It's probably a good thing that the feeling would fade, because it's not a bad thing to know that the world is bigger and more important than I perceive it right now to be. To remember a time when everything was grander. If I did not come out of it, I might think that I finally understood nature and mankind, but even then, it would be a long way from true. I would be in the same place as I had been in before: sure of myself and my relation to the world. But I know that the world is bigger than I think it is, because I remember perceiving it as bigger than I think it is, so I know that there's a good chance it (and therefore me, as part of the living ocean of spirit) is even bigger than that experience of grandeur.
While he was driving me home from PPD, I told my dad that I felt a little bit like the people coming out of Plato's cave, sensing a big world full of light and colors and more than shadows. It was sort of a joke, but also how I felt. By the evening, I had fallen back into normal life. But then it is the job of Plato's cave-dwellers - the ones who find the light - to come back into the cave and try to explain the light to those still trapped.
I fervently believe that the real world, the world of perceivable material and invisible spirit, is to the world which I perceive as the small world of PPD is to the outside world. If not larger.
And now I am done! I'm tired. I am in my own apartment about to sleep on my own bed. I could talk a little bit more about what the past 42 days have meant to me, but I won't. I can say easily that it meant more to me than money. I'm not sure how to express exactly what I have gained from 42 days of separation and near isolation, but it is certainly more than a paycheck. And now, I have to become normal again. Or something like it. I have to go through six weeks of piled mail. Pay bills. Try to save my nearly dead lily. Because that's life. And I kind of like it.
Whoever you are, if you have been following my daily posts for the whole of my study, thank you very much. I've never been very sure who - if anyone - was reading, so I tried as often as possible to act as though this blog would be read by no one except me but could be read by anyone with a computer. I appreciate you hanging in there with me through the lonely days and judgmental days and exciting days. I'm eager to see you soon and talk to you face to face, in person. If you've been reading, call me up or send me and email and let me know!
Take it easy, friends.
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