current events

The first thing you should know is that I am knee deep in boxes for the third time this year. Coming across my old high school journals, college readers and graduate school papers once again makes it that much easier to let it all go. Among other things, I came across a quote from Anne Sexton I used to have hanging above my desk many years ago.

Jonah made his living
inside the belly.
Mine comes from the exact same place.

Despite the chores of packing and lifting, despite the slight embarrassment of old love letters and over-earnest journal entries, despite the quick nostalgia that comes from sifting through one's life, I was glad for it all because I was given again that quote.

I met a man in his early forties the other night at a midnight bike ride. I'd never gone before and there were hundreds of people—stopping traffic, pissing drivers off and hooting and hollering. I guess the man sensed I was new to this, gathered that I was riding alone and befriended me before the group took off. We rode together the entire night telling each other the kind of secrets only strangers can tell one another. Riding through the empty streets of this city's downtown, through the still malodorous meat packing district, and the city's famous cemented river, we ruminated on our lives, on the lives of others we knew our age, and the faded glamour of this town I am soon to be leaving. We talked about our married friends, about whether or not, given today's political climate, it was a smart idea to even have kids, and how it's incredibly hard to get people out of the house to do anything any more. I commented that I supposed we could hang out with a bunch of twenty-year olds and he replied calmly, look around. That's exactly what we're doing. You and I, statistically speaking, are an aberration. I am still wrapping my head around his comment. An aberration. I have always been proud to live my life differently than the rest, to have chosen the road less traveled as Frost would have it, but every now and again it just strikes me like a sharp slap in the face. It is lonely. It is unknown. It is not the path I always want to be on. But that road, that road, it belongs to me.