Travel Log #4

June 6, 2009

You can definitely tell the wealth of an institution by the quality of its toilet paper. When you've got a high school with the plushy "Charmin" aka "it's good for your baby-soft-butt" toilet paper and automatic flushers, you know you've got some overly rich patrons on your hands. Too bad they're not my hands, but at least the benefit of the plushy paper is mine.

Ok, so I was at a place with those lovely benefactors today, where they all dress their clone children (all under the age of five) in pink with pink bows and they all run around in one pink fluff flurry like little cotton-candy avalanches across the floor, all giggly. Aah, I wish life were that simple. I pick them out by their struts: who's going to be a nerd in ten years and who's going to be a player. This one, that one. "How can you even tell the difference?" Oh, yes. That. I can't. They'll grow up to be Hallway Girls, all upper middle-class and pampered to perfection in a line and I'll be singing "Bless the Children" in the background. I'll be (like) too old to even (like) think about walking those hallways for a visit to old teachers, so I'll be lucky enough to miss their P.D.A. Their parents will donate to their self-righteousness and the bathrooms will be stocked fit to burst with the plushy and I will be proud of my grunginess and roughing-it style: newspapers and scrap paper recycled. Nothing goes to waste.

I've been busy, as usual, before today and before the pink fluff haven that brought me back to reminiscing about my Day School days. Getting everything in order, seeing friends off to Israel and Italy. The news came in on Thursday for me, though: I made it into OTZMA and now I'm hoping for those last funds and for scholarships to come through so I can be on my way. I will. Spent yesterday dealing with stupid student loan companies deferring. Have to resume that on Monday. One won't let me defer right now because I'm not in a "period of payment" due to the six-month grace period between graduation and loan company vulture mode. I have three weeks to get everything in order. If not, I'll deal with it from Europe.

Sorry for not writing for a few days. I've been in contemplation mode. I wrote a few days ago, but the writing slips into another kind of narrative with which some of you may not be so familiar. Seraphim are the main characters and a little girl is the other. Think of the little girl as me or you, or just a figment of the imagination.

June 4, 2009
Tonight is one of those nights where the heat keeps me awake and my mind races around like it's running for its life. I'm caught up in a very good book for once. It spits mythologies at me--and people I know. Fairy tales aren't the only places where people meet gods. Sometimes you meet them in real life, too, staring down at you from rooftops or holding your hand when you're alone in a crowd and need someone, something, to keep you afloat.

It has been a while now since I have met with angels. My life shifts into magical realism and myth. I accept it. There are some lives that cannot sustain sanity without dipping their feet in madness. Mine is one of them. I let myself float in dreams like this because these are the dreams that are real. These are the experiences that feed me.

Time is irrelevant. I skip back into your past and make it my present. This was three weeks ago, on the tip of the Cape, in Provincetown, on May 15. Angels were everywhere, and so I recorded them:

When I was young, I lived on the ocean. I used to see angels there. They spoke to me. I asked them why they deemed me worthy of holy. They said that holiness for them is a curse and human beings lack in perception.

Everything is a matter of perspective.

"You question us, yet you remain," says Micha'el.
"I know. It's for want of a friend. And if I have to go beyond humanity, I will."
And I do.
So they take me in and I understand, just a little bit, the curse of holy.

Above me, a black egret flies. Maybe it's a sign. The wind blows freely. I climb a dune and stand atop it. "Queen of the hill!" someone shouts. My arms spread out and an angel is behind me, wrapping itself around me. We clasp hands. No one else can see it.

When I was young, landlocked meant nothing to me. Water was all around but not a drop to drink. My toes are stuck in the sand and the sun beats down on me. There are some places where the perspective is more becoming of me, places where it's just me and nothing ahead but ocean.

Here, I forget sometimes that my heart is a time bomb. The clock stops and lets me live a little. I take my chances. The tide goes out. I do an about-face and resume my search for home.

This is an example of dreaming while I'm awake. I can get to a place where Time is malleable and bends to the whim of my hand. No, I cannot change the past, but I can bend it so that it is the present for observation. Yes, I can peek into the future and see its infinite possibilities and their collapse, in favour of one, as fate, or circumstance, or choice, passes them by. I can live those other choices in the state of observation, but I always come back. Fiction and reality intertwine and it doesn't matter where one ends and the other begins. If we believe something strongly enough, like angels or gods or nonexistence, eventually, it becomes real.

I dream of a house balanced precariously, like a seesaw, on a boulder in the middle of a riptide, even though the tide is low and I get to it on foot. "One day, you'll be stuck here, too,"/"You'll be here one day, too," says the person inside as he laughs and keeps the balance on a three-legged stool, and chews on an unlit pipe.

I never knew where "here" was and I may never know. Angels will say that "here" is irrelevant, too physical, as long as I am present in myself. I trust them because there has been no other reliably consistent direction.