So one of my best friends is hiking the Pacific Crest Trail right now, no money, no posessions, just a lover and a path. Do you need anything more? I am sitting at 10:52 p.m. with a trail of bitter e-mails wondering what I am doing with my life (or even with this moment).
Why do I sit here, glued to my corporate swivel chair, doing "important" company business, you might ask? Without pausing I would answer you, "TO PAY MY DEBTS." You might follow up with, "Is that really worth sacrificing your passions?" A friend of mine would answer, "Yes, for now, so that later on I can do whatever I want."
What do we need to be fully alive? Maybe just ". . . 500 pounds per year and a room of [my] own, in which to capture a few moments of silence and restore [my] voice back to the power without the pull of [my] "womanly responsibilities," or so said Virgina Wolf. WHAT ABOUT A SIMPLE LIFE? I suppose 500 pounds would not go as far today, but what would? When do we truely have enough to do whatever we want (not just buy some image of what we think will somehow fulfill us)? The image I get when I think about grasping at empty thrills or bottomless consumptions is the character "No Face" from Spirited Away who eats everything is site and becomes grotesque, when all he wants is a friend. Is what attracts our greedy base emotional desires really satisfying? If I decide to live dangerously in order to feel more alive, will I end up as more intensely me or a shifting shadow without substance.
I want to be Dave Eggers, Meryl Streep, Patrick Stewart, Emma Thompson, Jillian Barbery. People who are alive in themselves without pretending (except when they act, which still feels geniune).
I love what Dave Eggers says and so I have to quote him in my first blog (it is so long because I cannot bear to cut any of this):
"What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand. . . What matters is not the perception, not the fashion, not who's up and who's down, but what someone has done and if they meant it. What matters is that you want to see and make and do, on a grand scale as you want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny people say. Do not be critics you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. . . It is a fuckload of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes. . . We are evil people because we want to live and do things. We are on the wrong side because we should be home, calculating which move would be the least damaging to our downtown reputations. But I say yes because I am curious. I want to see things. . . . Saying no is so fucking boring.
After being inspired by Dave, I wish I could curse (which I do not do and will not start) or at least get off my ass (oh, I think I am staring), out of this Chair and onto St. Catherines where the clubs are hopping, but no, I sit and watch a man with a backpack vacuum move slowly down the hall and listen to a manager on the phone complain that we are all lazy bastards (another one - I cannot stop myself) who cannot commit.
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