Over the Atlantic

We are currently flying over the Atlantic. Despite a few delays, we are on our way to what some have called an adventure, some have called an experience, and others have called crazy. I don’t think too deeply about these decisions. I am afraid of talking myself out of such things. Negative thoughts can be poison, and we fill our heads with enough poison.

But the, “I don’t think we can (should) do it,” poison of the mind never really put up much of a fight this time. Usually, with decision rises doubt. Decision implies permanence. And, since nothing in reality has permanence, contradiction inevitably arises when permanence is declared. We don’t look at it as permanent. It is change. It is frightening, it is exciting. But it is only permanent if “home” and “proximity” become fixed ideals. And any fixed ideal is immediately poisoned by contradiction.

We were delayed in St. Louis, and again in Newark, New Jersey. Newark was where I saw my first brown sunset. Kelly, looking out the window at the haze of brown below us inquired, “is that Fall, or is that pollution?”

Beauty could not be Beauty without poison. In the immortality of the moment, Cleopatra, Socrates, and Hitler took poison. They became the ebb and flow of what we were. And what we are. And what we can be. We can be beautiful or we can be horrible. We even have the power to be or not be. It is all within our power of decision. We can decide to decide.

The rush of wind beneath wings guides an iron bird that can not exist without years of science, centuries of the mountain that crushed the iron, or the millenniums that magma furnaces grew the mountain. Despite whatever force now pulls us thousands of miles from our birthplace, people are comforting to people.

We fly on a plane that is comprised primarily of Scots. The syncopated accents and the orders of alcoholic beverages are a dead giveaway. When meeting new people I like to listen. I deciphered from the family behind us, that the little blonde boy wanted to keep a stray animal that had wandered into their Scottish house. He kept asking about a “gaaaayte” for the stairwell. His mother called the animal “little orphan Travis,” and brushed most of his questions aside with a hearty laugh.

That conversation could happen in any accent in any place in the world. The boy sees the faith, the companionship, and cuddly comfort. The parent sees the problems, the responsibility, and the shit. Somehow, we muddle through it. Neither were what they were. If the mother gets her way, or if the boy gets his, they will each be a bit changed. A bit wiser. A bit hardened, or a bit softened.

Each person is just a sum of his or her perceptions. No one exists without everything that has gone before. Everything is change. Nothing in reality exists that is not constantly changing. The mother’s heart softens to the innocent inquiries and logical constructions of the boy. The boy grows and learns that love is maintenance.

The sunset may be Fall or pollution. Death is not particular. Even as the cells in my body are dying and birthing, I change. The sea life stirs and dies and devours thousands of feet beneath me. There is not sadness in change. It is what is.

But I am no fool. I am lucky. I am luckier than 90% of the people who exist, or who have existed in their ebb and flow of toil. I could never write these words without family and friends whose sum I am the culmination of at this moment. These relationships and chemical equations that have created me and stretch back into infinity are the Truth of existence.

I, the sum these relationships, will grow, change, and metamorphose. I will never be “I” again. But this “I” never really was and never is. The Truth that fuels these relations is the connections that remain no matter how many miles separate. No man is an island and no man can exist without everything else that comprises reality. Love, hate, happiness, living, dying, and sadness are all a part of being. But the most important part of being is sharing.

Only by living together and sharing together can we die alone. It is the only thing that gives us comfort and truth in an otherwise distant, lonely, and conceptualized world. As strange as it sounds, I hope I grow closer to those I have left by leaving. At times my heart will ache, as it is designed to do, but those moments of joy upon rejoining… will not be unlike the astronauts who thought they were lost from the earth forever, feeling its gritty dust upon their feet, hands, mouths, and tongues. Truth is all around. But pettiness prevents me from appreciating it.