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Monday, September 25, 2006
Road Journal .13 (What are you doing now?)
On a windy evening, auburn leaves falling from oak branches, I put on my corduroy jacket and walked outside headed for the store. It was early September and the chill of autumn was already blowing through northern Virginia. I was staying at my mother's house for a few weeks while I saw a chiropractor to resolve a spine injury.

A half mile later I was in the checkout line of the grocery, a few cheap vegetables in my hands, waiting to lay them on the checkout belt. From across the red and yellow stacks of fruit in the produce aisle, I saw an old high school classmate. Our eyes met and a minute later we were exchanging hellos.

"Do you have a house around here?" he asked.

"No. I'm just in town for a bit."

"Where do you live now?"

"I don't really have a home."

"What do you do?"

"I don't really have a job."

I wasn't looking for one either.

I told him I was writing a novel while I traveled across the country, and he nodded.

He was friendly, despite being a little uncertain about me. We shook hands, I wished him well and was on my way. There was a time when I lied to people about what I was doing in order to avoid there strange reactions. I'd told people I was teaching second grade in Arizona. I'd told someone I was a middle manager in a Texas factory. I told one person I was a choclatier studying in Belgium. I had been through this so many times now, I just answered truthfully. I didn't have anymore lies to tell.

There were a lot of things I didn't have. I didn't have a car, I didn't have a steady income, I didn't have a steady girlfriend, I didn't know where my next meal or paycheck was coming from. I didn't have a book deal, an agent or a publicist. I didn't have any illusions either. I knew I wasn't an overwhelmingly talented writer and I knew that my success would be dependant upon my ability to immerse myself in a project, learn, and connect things.

Now that I was stuck in Virginia I was reading everything I could get my hands on. I was breaking down stories and trying to learn why they worked and where they failed. I was studying history and trying to make connections between the BC world and modern problems. Every person I talked to became a subject for my interview. I asked questions about what they did, how they got into their field, how they did their job. If they were successful I wanted to know how to emulate them. If they were failing I wanted to know what to avoid. I needed to learn the tools of success in any trade. The skill sets I needed were so broad I was finding instructors everywhere.

As for the things I did have, I had small stockpile. I had a novel, half of which still floated between my ears waiting for me to unlock the key to the floodgates. I had a laptop computer. I had a motorcycle. I had a few books and one backpack of clothes. My biggest asset though: I had a feeling of destiny and with it, I had infinite resolve. I also had $5,000 dollars to the penny and was hoping I could bounce around the country, staying with friends, until Christmas without having to get a job.

It wasn't that I was against working. It was just that I was eyeballs deep in the job of writing; a career in which I was working harder than ever but wasn't making any money. It didn't bother me. In fact, I was enjoying it. When I'd left school that was the plan: to travel, to write, to work jobs only in dire straits.

Big things were happening to me. I was feeling the rumblings of minor earthquakes. My interests and my comprehension were shifting.

I no longer had a care for pop culture. Music, celebrities and sports fell trivially out of my consciousness. The news too seemed meaningless. Politics, wars, and business all seemed redundant –like the world had seen these problems before and was recycling the old images in new patterns. What had become real to me was fiction. Art –fiction, songs, poems and paintings- seemed to carry the real truths of life. They weren't disguising themselves as fact either, just re-presenting the genuine emotions of humanity which have failed to change since Genesis. I was studying history texts and the bible to retrace these similarities.

As far as my own journey through time, a lot of things were beginning to gel but nothing had solidified yet. The map in my mind had yet to fully disclose itself. But a foggy image of the map was slowly being revealed. It could take me years to get where I was going. I might be a few hundred-thousand miles behind. Even still, I knew I was walking the right path.