and the Beat goes on...

Hello from 30,000 feet. I look down over my spanning country and see an emerald green, creeping lake dug into the land of Kansas. It trails off at the end into the tail of a river that feeds the brown land just enough to get by until the next spring rain. I should be relaxed right? Up here there’s not a deadline. Up here there’s no traffic (at least for the eye of the passenger), there’s nowhere to be, there’s only endless sky. Above the line of horizon there’s no start or finish to where I’m going. And, to be honest, holistically I am relaxed, but through the hassle of security and the rush of trying to stay organized through pulling things out of my bags and getting them through the x-ray, my ID fell out somewhere. I guess I’m no one now… at least until they find it somewhere in the terminal after the barefeet of thousands of green Americans traipse through to catch their spring break flights to somewhere not Kansas anymore.

One small thing like that can cause an entire change in the atmosphere of my day. We’re so small and fragile, humans. And I’m completely uninspired to elaborate on that loaded statement because I feel so scattered. But, the reason I feel scattered is futile. I want everything in my life to follow on a nice straight line, even my insane adventures. I don’t want them to be monotonous. My idea of a “put-together” life is made of spontaneous leaves-of-absence that cause me no trouble in leaving, and are never a little on the uneventful side. Should those things happen, I’m suddenly spinning out of control. On my way to being the kind of “out of control” I long to be, I need my life to remain structured or I cannot get there. An interruption like losing my ID causes me to be stuck in the world of structure longer, looking for a way to replace or find it in the chaos of business and organization so I can be free from the concrete walls of the airport.

The airport is the no-man’s land between two border checks. It’s here that I wait to make my break, all of the inspiration in front of me, and all of the heaviness behind me. A slip-up in paper work leaves me stranded here in no-man’s land… but here I am on the plane. So I brought a little bit of the concrete world with me to LA with the loss of my license. You see people boarding planes in suits, with family, with kids, with spouses, lovers and friends. I’m always by myself, and I wonder not so much where their final destination is, because that’s entirely missing the point. But, why are they leaving? I have to escape the world of responsibility that I live in most weeks of the year. Class, class, class, break, class, break, run, clean-up, work, study, sleep, repeat. On a lucky day that word “work” is replaced with study. Even luckier “seeing my friends and pretending to be human.” I’d never be able to get on this big bird without those things though. I’m not foolish enough to think that I could just jump from town to town and expect that I’d be able to accomplish the other dreams I have in my life living as a nomad. No. And, so there’s a sacrifice made. But that sacrifice of time into understanding life more, into developing my responsible side and supporting myself financially breaks the chains of that cycle itself and grants me an open door to get as many kicks on the road as I want.

gentlemen of the Generation

Even the Beats had that side. Some had PhD’s, some full-time jobs, some various manual labor, some were authors, scholars or even shiphands. And from these spurred an understanding of the two worlds, the in-between of the no-man’s land, the mad break at the border, and a lifestyle of straddling reigned responsibility and reckless passion.