music: Grateful Dead- Europe ‘72 d.2
July 1, 2006 was a day long in the making for me. I’d been scheming about packing up everything I owned and driving from Boston all the way to the Pacific ocean since I returned from a three week trip in Dinosaur National Monument three summers ago, since I started graduate school, since I started this weblog. And now that it’s done, and now that I’m down from the high country and the long walk between Sequoia and Yosemite is behind me as well, I’m able to put two enormous checks on the life list. Life since July has been dynamic, challenging, rewarding, and vital. The place in which I find myself currently is completely staggering as well-there are warm, sunny days and cool, foggy nights, I zip around town on my bicycle, moving from the beach (5 minutes from my doorstep) to coffee shops, dinner parties, bocce tournaments in the park, and free concerts at very regular intervals. I am reconnecting with old and new friends, sometimes even running into friends I haven’t spoken to in over 5 years just by chance. And the ‘job’ i’ve taken is equally as appropriate: my office is a National Park and my duty is to take school groups around sharing an appreciation for the natural world and certain scientific knowledge. I am living a life low on obligation and responsibility, and high on hedonism and experience. I also am allowing myself to linger in transition, not make any large life decisions or movements (other than a solo cross country move, of course) and unencumber myself to enjoy life more and worry about it less. There is a little voice in my head that quietly reminds me from time to time that there are greater things to which I will eventually dedicate myself, but for the time being I’m having quite a time. I also think that certain decisions upcoming will be more permanent and have a greater impact on the trajectory of how I spend my time on this planet, so between a very serious and dedicated life of service as a teacher and those decisions yet-to-come, I’m finding my groove. Even my migraines have all but stopped.
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
It is quite real, I must assure myself from time to time. But I am still enjoying a bit of a honeymoon period in which I have the flexibility and financial cushion to not buckle down out here and dig in. But there will be a point sometime soon where I’ll have to confront reality on a much more mundane scale, where I’ll have to start making enough money to support me and my few extravagances (which means actually working), where I’ll have to start making those tough decisions and stop acting from such a…selfish? standpoint. My time in San Francisco has been exclusively that of the wayward traveller, the hiker and adventurer. It just may be sustainable to do that but chances are greater that at some point the grind will catch up to me. But it hasn’t yet, and that’s just fine.
California is a place of extremes. The tallest mountain in the lower 48, the lowest and hottest valley, the largest trees in the world…oceans and volcanos, earthquakes and traffic, wide open spaces and multicultural centers…this is a place like no other. And it’s strange to think that I live here. Maybe this is one of the places where it’s OK to mingle fantasy with reality to a degree. It is noticably different from Boston and the East Coast, but how far will that carry? I’m curious to find out. I’m out here for the forseeable future, the pace and focus of my life has changed a great deal, and although I terribly miss some things about who I was a few months ago I am very glad for the change.
Open your eyes, look up to the skies, and see.
And on that note, I’ve noticed that my activity here has lessened as of late. It could be a function of this life shift, that maybe the weblog was meant to be a document of my thoughts during graduate school and teaching, and now that my environment is quite different this isn’t as immediately relevant to my day-to-day. Sometimes I feel like Bobby (with whom I apparently share a city now) about this whole business. While it’s good to keep in the practice of writing I find myself with less and less that is worth saying publicly (or less and less desire to say things publicly). Like my realtime experience, I think virtual Taus on the Internet might need some refocusing and adjusting. And like the currents i’m currently riding, I’ll wait to see what happens, what I’m feeling like in the near future, what will inevitably motivate me one way or another. But in the meantime I’m having fun with it and surely am not stressing over it.
Any way the wind blows, doesn’t really matter to me.
Posted by davidtaus at October 26, 2006 01:16 AM | TrackBack