Samsara

It really is a cycle, isn't it? Ass-breaking semester, three months of ennui, then a rude awakening, punctuated by disastrous eating spells, hours playing Halo 3, and feverish reading. This is also the time of the year when I get sick, and not just like common cold-sick, but clinics-telling-me-I-have-meningitis-sick. I feel this, I feel it all-the cycle- and I'm just playing my part.

Well, to bring this up to speed, I guess I should offer a little precis of this month. I'll start with trips, you know, the big stuff. Um, well, At the beginning of the month, Susan and I went camping with Franz and his girlfriend, Yezi. My best friend Danny was supposed to come with his girlfriend, but he got held up. Danny had about as shitty of a month as a 20-year-old can have. It all started when his girlfriend's grandmother died. Danny said he and she were close, even closer than he is with his own grandmother, so the loss struck him pretty hard. Naturally, Danny had to go to the visitation and the funeral. Here's the kicker: His five-year anniversary fell on one of her visitation days. SO, Danny and Emilee postpone all romantic plans a couple days (Remember this). SO, after this catastrophe, Danny gets into a series of fights with his dad over bills. They must have been bad because you won't believe what happened next. Due to intense stress, Danny actually came down with SHINGLES! Super rare for a young person to experience, shingles is actually a pissed off, resurrected chicken pox virus. Danny described the rashes as ten times worse than the worst sunburns he'd ever gotten. He couldn't even wear a shirt. Well, of course, Danny couldn't work. When he told his boss he had shingles, she was amazed, mostly because she has the IQ of a goldfish. From what Danny said, Danny had to painstakingly explain his condition, only reaching an understanding after having to arduously lift his shirt and expose his seething rashes. Even after vouchsafing Danny a day off work for obvious medical reasons, she was still a little peeved, and she stayed on his ass for the rest of the summer. This was when I stopped over to bring Danny a shipment of hope: four tacos and a couple Arnold Palmers. His sister ate everything I brought later upon opening the fridge while Danny was downstairs. Next in the catalogue of misery, Danny's girlfriend's cousin dies. So, Danny once again donned the black garb and hit the pews. At the mass, another cousin gave his girlfriend a hug, bruising her ribs so badly, Danny had to take her to the hospital right after the service.

This is where I thought God was done with Danny, where I thought he'd tell Satan that the bet was off, Danny showed faith, and the game was over. I told Danny he just had to make it to the weekend, when we'd all be up North tubing down the Au Sable River, forgetting the world. Wednesday, Danny's girlfriend's friend's Grandfather dies, a man neither Danny or-I'm assuming- Emilee had ever met, but because Kendra, Emilee's friend, had attended Emilee's Grandmother's funeral, Emilee felt obligated to go to Kendra's Grandfather's. The funeral was to be on Saturday, smack-dab in the middle of our planned camping trip. "FUCK, MAN! Now I have to miss a day! Well, I guess Emilee and I will just have to head up there later and just have about a day-and-a-half with everyone."

Saturday rolls around. I'm on the Au Sable River, several miles from Glennie, just chillin'. Rain forced us to abandon our makeshift grill and head towards a fast-food alley. As soon as I get reception, Danny calls me, "Bro, I have all my camping stuff packed and ready to go. It's sitting in a giant heap. I have lanterns, marshmellows, fishing poles, tackle, baseballs, bug spray, clothes, snacks, matches, rope, and bed spreads-I just can't find my fucking TENT! I think it's at my dad's, so I called him. He said it wasn't there. Emilee isn't back from the Goddamn funeral yet. Apparently, 500+ people showed up, and they all want to pay their respects. So...yeah...I guess we're not coming..."

I took a deep breath, looked over at Susan, then answered him: "Jesus, man...Yeah, do what you gotta do, I guess. I'm sorry."

As for the rest of the trip, it went pretty well. It rained hard, but we made the best of it. We each had a tornado of insects around our heads, just no-see-um's and midges, but the mosquitoes weren't too bad. It was actually kind of nice hearing the pitter-patter of the rain while Susan and I were happy and warm in the tent. For food, the women tried their best at grilling; my hamburger looked and tasted like it had just been lopped off the ass of the cow. My dad would have licked his lips had it been on his plate, winking at the waiter who just lowered his food, "Now this is rare!" We spent most of our time tubing or fishing. We caught nothing, despite my dad's auction-won trout spoons. It was like we were fishing with dog turds. I saw one kid floating down in his tube with a pile of rainbow trout in his lap. "They keep hittin' me in the nuts, ma!" he said, grinning and wincing at the same time.

Our second tube ride was three hours, and Susan kind of ruined it for me. She'd been in a grouchy mood since we got there (maybe because she had to do all the driving?), and by the third day, her patience with bugs, weather, and, above all, me, was wearing thin. We were about a quarter-mile ahead of Franz and Yezi when I turned to her and said, "Aren't you kind of jealous of them?"

"What?" she said, voice low, eyes glowering.

A little taken aback, I proceeded cautiously, "Oh you know, it's just that they like get to have all the firsts, you know? First kisses, hand-holds, all-night talks, naps in each other's arms, that sort of thing."

The sun glistened a bit from the corners of her eyes. Already wet, I thought. Shit. "We have firsts left to have, too!"

"Of course, of course, honey! I know! It's just that...never mind."

The next half-hour was silent. Susan stared blindly ahead looking like the water just turned to ammonia, nose and eyes drawn up like someone trying desperately hard not to cry. You've all seen that face. Ever watched someone chop onions?

Things between us stayed tense until she dropped me off at home. I forced myself to nap rather than get embroiled in a highway fight with her. Susan hates my car-talk. Hm, I guess I would, too. Something about the open road gives my mind wanderlust, though. One time, I asked her why farmers had horses. After all, we don't need them to pull plows anymore, and they don't offer meat, wool, or milk. The only two benefits horses offered that I could rationalize were their droppings for fertilizer and the boarding business, when rich people keep their horses on another's property.

"Maybe they just like them," she said.

"Hm, I don't think so. There must be something more. I has to make sense, or cents, for these farmers."

I spent the next thirty minutes apologizing for being arrogant.

Things got better between us until early last week. She came down for the weekend to celebrate our six-month anniversary. Again, she was mopey. Nevertheless, I tried to make the best of it. We went to all our favorite restaurants (She has a Del Taco fetish. She munched on Churros the whole time), but still she moped. Like fifteen minutes before she had to leave, she said something that hurt me personally, BUT, giving her a pass for being hormonal and unusually mopey, I ignored it, let it fall off my shoulders like rain. I went to my counter, ate some cereal, and hummed to myself, while she walked around my house gathering her things, face stony and dour.

"Bye, love you!" I said, waving her off. No response.

Ten hours passes, then I get a text asking me whether my dog misses her. That pissed me off. I texted back, saying something like, "I don't think we should speak for a few days." That upset her, understandably so. A day passes. Then another. I was eating with friends when I got a text from her asking me whether it'd be all right for her to come down after work. "Sure," I answered. Whatever ridiculous point I was trying to make, it had been made, I thought. She came, we talked, and I blamed it on the cycle.

It IS the cycle. I'm behind a veil of ignorance, waiting to see what I'll be in another new world. Will there be equity and mercy? Will I finally get my car hitched to the train? Or will another fuse blow? Will another light flicker and die? Will doors open? Close? Slam on my neck? William James distinguishes two different types of people: the healthy-minded, like Walt Whitman, and the sick souls, a la me. Whitman was one of those rare humans who could enjoy and feel God/a higher power in everything. To him, the world was whole, pure, and good. His friends commented on how he could sit for hours admiring rocks, offering benedictions to the trees, rejoicing for the birds. Whitman simply ignored evil. It was left out of the equation, it had no place in his world. Sick souls are different. We've tasted evil. We can't be ignorant, even if we try. We've been tainted, touched by the black hand. We need to be, as James explains, "twice born." This is what most of the current creeds aim to teach or accomplish. Christians, Muslims, and Jews pine for heaven, a second, perfect life they earn through defeating evil in this flawed world. Eastern religions try to equip adherents for a detachment, a release, from this evil-filled world.

Susan always tells me that I see the worst in everything. "I try only to see things as they are," I always say.

Should we just jump ship? Is this sinking man-ruined leviathan a hell, an illusion, a test?

The abstractions jostling each other for supremacy in my brain are growing tired. I can't keep defending both sides of everything, saving myself for some kind of ultimate enlightenment, when I'll just smirk at all the "growing up" I'd suffered through to get there. This cocoon is bursting at the seams, even if it hangs above an abyss. I think I'd rather sink than cling any longer. It's time to pick a road and go. Nothing is worse than inaction. It's inert and fearful- a static, somnolent hell.

When I look back at college, will I have the photo albums of smiling people with red cups? Will there be me cradling some third-world baby with a guiltless smile? Will I have T-shirts with slogans and '10's and '11's on them? Will I have the stories to go along with them, the ones about people falling off fire escapes, pissing off balconies, getting punched, getting laid, getting stoned?

Will I be touched? Will someone drop a line in my brain and hook the big one. Will I even ever have an interesting conversation again? What if it's off to a desk after this?

The last last conversation I had was last fall. I was on a park bench reading "Absolam, Absolam!" by William Faulkner, when a pair of Mormons sat next to me. We talked about predestination, the Golden Tablets, ecumencial councils, redemption, Hell, sin, Young, Smith, eschatology, evolution. I can't get people to remember my name anymore.

And as I sit, as I type, I'm just swept up in cycle. Just flowing with the cycle. Spinning in the cycle. Packing like last year. Reading like last year. Scared like last year. Heart-pounding like last year. Fighting like last year. Walking around like last year. Starting conversations that die like a cough in the winter cold like last year. Bored like last year. Stalling like last year. Hating and loving the same people for the same reasons like last year.

I told Susan that I want to start over in Oxford. She told me to go for it. I laughed at her and at myself.

So here's to the cycle! Here's to not moving, but getting moved! Here's to not learning, but to learning how to do something for someone! Here's to the toilet swirl.