She said from the mountain...

It is almost 11:00 and everyone else in the DeYoung house has gone to bed except me and Thryn. She keeps playing these riffs from electric cellos that she finds on the net, and tries to keep from swooning at the thought that she soon hopes to own one herself. There are laptops and papers and pens and thoughts scattered all over the dining room table. We three (Jeff, Thryn, and I) have spent the night looking for jobs. We are a dedicated bunch, you must give us that. No, that's not true, they are dedicated, I dedicate myself to nothing, but merely go along for the ride. Dedication is just another tether that ties you down to something, another block between you and the quick exit you might find it necessary to make.

I am moody tonight. I feel out of place, here among friends in safety, I feel uncomfortable in my own skin. I feel that failure is an inevitability for me. Think of all the people in the world who are so fantastic, living fantastic lives and doing fantastic things and meeting other fantastic people and regaling each other w/ tales, told w/ the unpretentious grace of those who need not impress others, of the places they have been, the things they have done, the lives they have lived; words blending with the steam from their macchiatos and rising towards God like the prayers of the saints. How could anyone ever think of me or my life as fantastic? Blast you, melancholy, self-deprecating thought, how dare you rear your ugly head! Pipe down, be content with your mediocrity, keep your head down and no harm will come to you. The problem with that is, for those content to live w/ thier heads in the sand, nothing ever comes to them at all.

Life is a chance, and I don't mean a gamble. It's an opportunity for things to be done and for things to happen, like one big, 90-year-long play that you get to be your own Shakespeare for. But then, you start the drama and you realize how much was scripted for you from the start, how much you cannot change, how many characters you are thrown into the mix with that you can't control or understand, how much of yourself you never meant to become when you first made your entrance as "Newborn Baby." And when you realize this, you start to let those unchangeable things push you around, and as they push you, you grow smaller and weaker, and they push more until you realize that, even though you once dreamed or wanted to, you can't write poems or act in plays, you can fight duels in the woods with sticks, you can't train to become a samurai or join the Legion or learn to load a musket in 20 sec. flat, you can't write songs or novels or preach a word that will change the lives of thousands, you can't build houses for the poor or rescue the victims of a mudslide or hurricane, you can't raise fat and happy babies in a neat country house with flower boxes below the windows, you can't tie your shoelaces or chew gum and walk at the same time. And then, oh then when you smash your face against the brick wall of can'ts, you forget the gift, you forget the excitement of being given the chance, you squander it by settling for less than life, real bone-shaking, earth-quaking, rattle-the-chimney, and knock-your-socks-off life, you settle deep down in your soul that this must be as good as it gets, b/c to go for better would cause work and pain and hardship and loss and who knows what else, it must, it surely must be better to just wait here and settle. And so you settle and settle, you turn 40 and 50 and you settle some more, you read the morning paper everyday and settle, your kids check you into the home and you settle there, until you settle your own dust down in the grave, wondering, "What the hell was that all about? Where was the big secret, the big, unlocking key that would have made it better, or okay?

My good friends and comrades-in-arms, I do not want to end up that way.

So what's to do, how can you not lose sight of the bigger picture of your dreams in your day-to-day of writing papers and taking tests and dancing to jazz music in the kitchen while you cook your omelet before the eggs go bad? I don't know. I do not know, if I knew, I would be doing much better right now, right here, in this 11:12 moment.

But maybe, maybe what you do is stay up just a little bit later, brush aside the stacks of papers and sleepy laptops, and you dream, just a little bit longer. I can't give up, no sir, not on a single dream, not even on the samurai dream or the dream of the little white house done up just so and filled with happy people. Some day, I think that all good dreams come true in some form or another. I am an idealist, and to be an idealist means that w/o these silly, happy thoughts and the requisite pinch of pixie dust, you die, and no amount of hand-clapping could change it. So I must continue to live in hope, to live in sunshine and the dreams of tall-sailing ships on open horizons, I will hope forever, for as long as I can, I will hope till I die as God gives me stregnth. I will act silly, I will shout hello to the full moon, I will tell the stories and sing the songs as long as there is an ear to hear them, even if that ear is only my own. Bah, idealism is for the birds! but birds fly, and angels fly, and someday I will fly too.