Monday, June 16, 2014

The River's So Pretty, The Air Is So Fine: Traveling

This was an unreleased demo version of Paul Simon's song "Something So Right", which is a song I posted when I was preparing to travel to Singapore around a year and a half ago. In that entry I described the dawning realization I was having that "happiness" is something more than the lack of unhappiness. I don't exactly remember the state of mind I was in when I wrote that, but I think it most likely had something to do with the values and beliefs I've been turning over for quite a long time now: things like self-determination.

Now I'm preparing to go to New York City and look into the eyes of random strangers and convince them (and myself) that me living in their apartment is a great idea. "Apartment hunting". But really more like "life hunting" or "future hunting". But also just "current moment hunting" -- looking for a place to land. At the same time it means a lot and it means nothing at all. This is a common contradiction I find.

In my current job, which I am leaving in a few weeks, I plan and deliver fundraising events. In learning how to do this, in using the skills I already had, I've figured out how to wind up and swing. When you plan a fundraising event you plan and plan, you prepare, you think through everything that might possibly happen -- but then a moment comes and you have to just execute. Make it happen.

I can't help but feel that this might be that moment for my own life. The wind up has taken a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time. Probably it started when I was given Slouching Towards Bethlehem to read in high school and decided that I wanted to be an essayist, a career path for which there is no clear course. And as you do when you have an ambition like that, I've just tried to always take the next logical step.

On that rope bridge of happiness right now I am very much in the middle. The next step, the next step, the next step.


The song: Paul Simon, "Let Me Live In Your City"; recorded 1973

Yrs,
AW

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