On Adventure

The time for brooding came to an end, pretty satisfactorily early. The weather, as it must, broke, over the weekend even, which is a nice circumstance. Earlier we'd been discussing - me and... Others... I don't know who I talk to all the time, I just talk to people - the consensus opinion though was that in 2013 we'd been cheated out of a Summer and that is true. It was grey and grim this summer past and none of us felt satisfied with what had happened. Especially the weekends, I remembered that - that I spent most weekends indoors being stifled. It's important that the weather breaks and gives you the opportunity to live as people are meant to live at least a little bit every week.

Maybe people are meant to live in closed in places, brooding in darkness. You know what? If that's true - then I'm the best person ever, the platonic ideal.
But I think going out under the sun and the other visible stars is right.

Last night we went out to late dinner and walked through the neighborhood under the stars and I thought about how I'd not really even seen any constellations in a long time - so long ago that I was rusty and had a hard time identifying any. Coated, as it is in rust, my mind is ever on the rust-belt. We ate up like kings and were satisfied, and walked some more. Agatha was leaping and climbing up over and on the boulderlike remnants of snowdrifts and I remembered how I'd once found the fossilized snow. It was in an abandoned railway, under a loading dock - this snow-drift in July and where had it come from? What even was it? I put it together as best I could - minerals precipitated into the snow, a lot of calcite from out of the concrete above it, so that as the snow melted the calcite remained in the exact shape of a melting snow-pile. I broke a piece off and it was a little salty, a little dirty - just exactly a snowdrift in the middle of a thaw - but it was in July. I wondered, idly, if this was something I'd discovered first, but I'd not brought my camera, and I don't know if I could find that spot again. Railroads in summer, something about it that appeals to my hobo center.

Anyhow, A was running and searching and looking at her feet, and I was eyes on the sky - saying: "You're the earth element today, fascinated by what's underfoot and close, but I'm in the sky now, because I'm tired of the dirty old earth and I like looking at the clean-looking sky." Aware, you know, that the sky isn't really all that clean, that space and the stars are dust and grit. Still, it looks a lot clearer and a lot less shabby. That's the winter though, the way that the earth huddles and you feel everything close and there's a cloying filth that you see everywhere. Feel on you. The thaw reveals it, shows the dirty grit that's surely in the sky and space as well as on the ground all around you. Still, I'm tired from it all, Rusted. This being the source of imagination as an outlet, looking for the beatified clean-pure thing, the geometric world.

Walking in the dark and looking at stars, telling old stories on full bellies, thinking about the things that interest us. I don't know, is this adventure? It's the kind of thing that's called that now, as if being away from home at all is adventure. I don't think so, I think it's living, and home or work is stasis, just as cottony as sleep. I'd been feeling fenced in and trapped. Now, I have some real semblance, some real-true-actual adventure on my horizon, and that's doing the trick. It's a good reason to act in the moment, having this to look forward to, to be a little anxious about, a little uncertain about, knowing I'll be called upon to rely on my best qualities - those qualities most likely to moulder and rot in the solitary wintertime.


We went to the Inn for the first pancakes of the year - they were adequate, and this little kid, the one with the least adventurous palate ever insisted on eating them without syrup and without jelly and without butter. Dry pancakes. It was a good experience though and we were happy, glad together. We stopped for groceries on the way home and then went home, hauling the heavy goods that we need to fortify against the winter. I felt very strong and good and we walked and talked and were in high spirits. Once we'd gotten home and rested just briefly though, she was called to join her friends at the bookstore for a meeting of the new club. I bought her a book and got myself Boxers & Saints and then she went off to an old lady's birthday party while I stayed home and read comics till late in the evening when I went out to 'rampage'.

No-one really rampages when they go to see a band. I saw some good-ish ones and was happy to see them, but you know - it's a press of people you kind of know, and have seen around - but there's no conversation, especially, and there's no dance to be had. Outside I talk at length (as is typical, it happens) with the local hobos and indigents, sharing cigarettes and tales of the strange fortunes in the city. It's a good experience but I get over-eager to drink and gulp whiskey and big pabsts for too long and then end up meeting up with someone and taking her to the wine-cave for more beer and after that it's back to my house for additional beer and some light cuddling.

Sunday, all day I'm hungover and sickly - hungry and tired, nap it away till the afternoon when the Little Red One returns, triumphant, ready for cookies and dinner. We walk all through the evening and I'm re-invigorated and powerful.


Now, is that adventure? It's a satisfactory way to spend an evening, but I think of it and I tell you, that adventures have payoffs - either remunerative or literary. Until there's the payoff, the return on the effort and risk invested- well, then it's just another weekend.