When I was nineteen, I had “dropped out” of college and was working as a bus boy/bar back at a seafood restaurant in Austin, Texas. I had rather long hair, or at least for me as mine grows very slowly, and was reading more than I ever had before or have ever since. I had small cairns of books all about my apartment, most of which shaped my thinking from those days onwards. The only difference is, now I am beginning to understand them.
My good friend Tom and I were living a Bohemian life, across the board, as he shared my apartment most of the time as his relationship with his girlfriend had gone South and he was stuck without a place to live for a Time. We had conversations til the break of dawn on a daily basis about everything from the inability to understand women (yes, cliched, but valid), the inability to be understood ourselves by women (ditto), and the gamut of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” that nineteen year-old guys talk about. Tom and I were dreamers, and for the most part, armchair philosophers. We would stand on the balcony for hours opining the world away, though between the two of us had very little “world” experience, though he more than me at least.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my life. I had left a decent private school because I had quit the swim team and did not want to be in that environment any longer, but was not sure that I wanted to be back in school either. I have had a lifelong struggle with education, as I love learning more than anything, but have been disappointed with educational institutions. This is nothing new, as I used to protest at a very, very young age about my “need” to go to school. The irony of course is that I learned that dissatisfaction by becoming more educated within those institutions. It is in fact what made me decide to dedicate my life to teaching, to instill a sense of questioning, yet also to teach the rich traditions of the humanities. This has caused much commotion in my life as most people usually take one or the other (challenge or tradition), but I believe that the traditions are only made better by being tested sufficiently by questioning, thus yielding yet a stronger alloy of thought tempered by the fires of dissent and scrutiny. The wheels turn.
So, I was becoming the “self-taught man,” the autodidact, reading all what I could like the character in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea, though not in alphabetical order. But, ending up more like “Jude the Obscure,” I felt on the outside of the ivoried towers of knowledge, not being taken seriously like those who had gone to the ivory-covered halls of learning. The University of Texas loomed liked Kafka’s Castle over me...taunting my lack of erudition, refinement, and authenticity as a thinker. I was just a punk kid who liked to hang out in coffee houses and read books, argue over things I didn’t even comprehend, and write novels that more than a handful of people have yet to read, (though of which I plan to edit with a vengeance once back in Belgium from India). I had big dreams, big ego, big delusions of grandeur, and a big open hole in my culture. There’s a hole in my culture dear Liza, dear Liza, there’s a hole in my culture dear Liza, a hole. I need to fill it, so I thought I would set out to Europe.
I booked a Eurail pass, which at the time where cheap, made a deal with Tom to take over my apartment, bought an orange Let’s Go!, and, so I left.
I flew into Amsterdam like many Americans do, though did not visit those coffee houses as it was not my drug of choice, though did enjoy the beer. That was the beginning of a three-month trek across 17 countries/territories/principalities and more hostels than I can remember. I met dozens of fellow travelers and in those days Americans used to actually backpack across Europe, which is nearly a rarity these days. The ubiquitous Maple would be proudly stitched on Canadians’ packs, being certain to distinguish themselves from their less-liked southern neighbors.
It was a grand Time, and a grand tour. I was young, stupid (though thought I was brilliant), naïve, daring, resourceful, and ready to take on the world, or so I thought I was doing that. What I have come to realize is what a laughably small part of the world I had and still have actually seen.
But, I was young, and with youth comes a dose of great confidence, a strong tincture of folly for good measure.
Having traversed the continent, shedding books, clothes, and pounds along the way, I ended up in Greece for the last three weeks. My eldest sister and her then husband were stationed on Kreta at the Knossos site as he was an archaeologist. By that point, I had felt like I had been initiated as a traveler, passing from a mere tourist that I had been the first time I had been off of the North American continent for the same sister’s wedding in Great Britain.
No, this time, I was not a mere tourist, but indeed a traveler. However, I was a traveler without a cause. I had passed the initiation, but was stuck in a disjunct. I wasn’t European, but neither did I feel American any longer. I did not feel like a “kid,” but wasn’t an adult. I wasn’t in school, was not in a relationship of any kind, and had had almost no contact with anyone from the United States for the entire trip as this was pre-email and pre-cell phone. I know if you are younger, you may have just gasped that anyone could be that old...
In addition, I was no longer “The Swimmer.”
I was in limbo, and I did not see a way out.
Backpacking across Europe in the late 80’s was seen as nearly a rite of passage for American teenagers. Go East, sort of, and sow your wild oats. Come back to America and make a fortune and become a doctor, lawyer, corporate raider, because, “Greed is Good,” as Mr. Gecko hissed into our impressionable ears.
I missed the memo.
What the trip was, was indeed a passage of rites, and it was to be one of the biggest steps in my life towards “Know-ing Myself.”
While on Santorini, the famed island in the Cycladaes group, and which is the island photographed as the face of Greece, I was staying on one of the many black sand beaches as Santorini is a volcanic island and is the Greek island. You know, the one with the blue houses and whitewashed stucco buildings? That’s the one, and it is the only one of the dozens of Greek islands that actually looks like that.
I love to swim, and when I can, in the ocean or sea. So, I swam each day while there. One day, I decided to keep swimming, not sure why, but I did. I just put my head down, and swam, not looking back. When I did look back, I was in for a bit of a shock. I had swum out about 2km and could not even really see the beach any longer. I was on the periphery of the island, threatening to be pulled into the general current of the Adriatic.
I turned and began to swim back in, but made very little progress as the sea didn’t feel like giving me up at that point. It was the first time in my life that I realized I might not have any control over my own life due to bigger things. I kept swimming and eventually through a series of panic, fear, anger, and finally resignation, I thought that I might not make it. Nobody knew I had gone out as I knew nobody there. It would be ten hours before the beach would be cleared and my lone towel found. I stopped and bobbed in the water, and thought about a lot of things for a while.
That day, though, I chose life. I have at times foolishly and childishly cursed my life, asked God, “why me?” like an arrogant blasphemer, but, I always knew that there is a way out. That is the odd thing about choice and what Sartre has called the true existential question, suicide.
I could have turned back out and kept swimming. I was at a crossroads. I did not know what I was going to do when I got back to Austin. I was already on the path to what would be a lifelong series of decisions that many people in my life would kind of look at me and say, “huh?” to. I had no plan. I had no “ambition.” I had not identity that distinguished “me” from the masses. I was no-one.
But, I chose life, and have ever since, despite that feeling of not always fitting in. I continued swimming against the outward pull of Poseidon’s realm and kept swimming. After what indeed feel like an eternity, I was able to make it back to the point where the wave starting rolling in, and I felt a natural forward movement. I crawled back onto the beach, and collapsed on my towel.
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