light years

Perhaps my memory fails me, but I feel as though I used to engage in some sort of mental processes when taking a walk or seeking a moment of silence. Perhaps that all wishful thinking, but I feel as though epiphanies and clarity used to spring up from my footfalls and float down to me as I stared into the sky. But these days it seems I could stare into the night for hours without so much as one profound thought. During these times I think about the Buddha, who refused to move from beneath the bodhi tree until he reached enlightenment. I'm unsure if even 49 days would bring me enlightenment today.
On days like this one, when at work it feels as though I'm struggling to treat a political juggernaut of an institution all alone, and I feel as though I'm disengaged from my own perfectly fulfilling personal existence, my mind is blank. It's thick, tired... waterlogged with a milky substance that keeps me stuck somewhere between ambivalence and apathy. Continually catching glimpses of my definitive thoughts, directions, beliefs through the fog... but never quite capturing them. On days like today it feels a bit like the dreadful 2007 version of The Mist. Without the disturbingly tragic ending (hopefully). Visually it's quite apt: I'm forever unsure of what is lurking in the impenetrable white fog ready to snatch me off the earth and tear me to a bloody mist... or of whether or not it is going to abruptly clear just beyond my sight into a green utopian haven. Birds chirping, dogs playing. It causes apprehension on most days- dumb courage on the best, blind panic on the worst.
I find myself sitting in the rocks, comfortably sinking into a crevice, staring quizzically into the stars and searching for even one definitive thought to hold on to. But the harder I run after them, the quicker they flee. So I sit and stare into the White.

I left Del Norte in 2000. Ten years ago. I left at a run, middle finger in the air, never looked back, and never for a moment regretted leaving.
Greeley was a place of growth and learning, the best years of my life perhaps. It was the first time I was ever told this and found it quasi-believable, anyway. But by the time I was done there my heart was positively shattered and I was a wounded, needy, sexually confused and on the fast-track to alcoholism. I felt the same urge I had felt so many times before: to run.
So I ran. I ran far across the country, this time to the big city. Without a one thin dime, without an acquaintance to dine, I sat on the floor in the corner of my empty bedroom and asked myself aloud, "Oh God. What have I done? I've made a terrible mistake." I felt homesick but had no specific home to miss.
And I hadn't made a mistake. It was the best move, second to the aforementioned, of my life. It was the place that I would be able to call home- more so than any place had ever been before. But I recall the black leather couches in the corner of the Greeley Borders cafe, and the words I wrote in my journal there. "Will I ever stop running? Will it ever be enough? Where will I run next? And after that? And where is left after that?"
I suppose I should consider it surprising that I have felt so content for so long, and avoided the uproarious voice in my head that has repeated the same words to me over and over since I was twelve years old. "It's not enough. You're not doing enough. You are supposed to be doing something greater."
Recently in passing I have expressed to my partner my urge to go, to help. "I wish that I had the money to just go whenever there is a crisis. Whenever there is a Haiti, or a Katrina or a Gulf spill. To just go. Show up and say, I'm here to help." I say, "I signed up to volunteer with the Audobon Society and the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. I will go if they call me." And I fully intend to. Why I feel that this servitude will be any less frustrating to me than my current daily employment, I don't know. The novelty of it, perhaps. Mostly I feel the urge to give everything of myself, day after day, in order to be personally fulfilled. It's not altruism, by no means. There's no such thing. I want to dedicate my life to the servitude of others for my own reasons. Whatever the point of this existence, that must be as close as we can get to getting it right. Right?
I think often about the Peace Corps. But I would be content (I have no reason to think this, really), by being able to go and help the needy when needed.
My rational brain, the angel-bird on my shoulder, tells me that doing good works is going and doing them every day, not when a disaster strikes and there is an outpouring of assistance. Truly doing good is to help the homeless and needy on our own street corners that we drive past daily and constantly choose to turn away from. Those who are just as needy but have become invisible to us, blending into the landscape of Central Square or City Hall Plaza.
I feel heart broken and enraged by the Gulf disaster, and the lack of importance we give it. The lack of thought, the lack of media coverage... the lack of understanding. Do we not understand what we have done? Do we not care? Do we feel it's just another abominable trespass in our litany of offenses, none worse than any other? Or do we just not want to know? We have snuffed out creatures undoubtedly far nobler than ourselves, forever.
I fear for the world. I fear for any children I may have. God I fear for them. They may grow up in a world without clean water, without sea life. A world where America is a police state and "give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses wishing to be free" is replaced with "all trespassers will be shot." A world where history is rewritten to cover the sins of the Aryan people, denying the very existence of any others. I fear for my children, I do.
I acknowledge the chaos around me daily numbs me at times. And makes me quite raw at others. The lack of human empathy, the lack of humane treatment. The cutting and the bleeding and the threatening and the jangle of chains and clicking of metal cuffs. The noose-tightening and the frustrated tears and the blind unchecked rage.
Yes, there are those living in the midst of this who state that they are "blessed." They do. They find joy within the confines of these walls and they work harder than I ever could every day. They battle to fight off this fog around them and maintain their sanity, to better their minds and amend their sins. How they are not lost in this place I surely do not know. But if they can stay afloat, I surely have no excuse. They are marvelous to me.
Still, my question of "when will it be enough?" rings in my ears. I suspect it would become an addiction- whether struggling to move rubble after an earthquake, scrubbing oil off of rocks with a toothbrush, or digging a ditch in a remote third-world village, I suspect that I would never have enough of it. And that would be fine. Good, even. As long as it fills this void inside of me. As long as this thirst, this pulling sensation in my chest subsides. As long as it helps me to see through this fog even a little better. As long as it quells this feeling of "not enough," and makes me feel as though I am fulfilling my destiny and obligation to the earth and whatever creator looks over it. Whatever Creator looks over it. Perhaps therein lies the true issue.
Another blog... for a day with less fog.