Friday, September 9
“Life is simple. At least, it should be.”
“Or should it?”
These were the first few carefully chosen words which David meticulously spoke into his brand new iPad Journey Journal. He was beginning a new journey, starting today, and he wanted to keep a record of his trip along the way. His thoughts, ideas, inspirations, frustrations, challenges, inventions, conversations. Today, he would become more like his long-dead but still quite alive mentor, Henry David Thoreau. Now there was a human who explored the world of “simple.” And kept a daily journal of his musings for decades.
With the swift and graceful movement of a ninja art thief in a crowded museum, David threw his “simple” journal into a knapsack, and headed out of his dorm room, out into the common areas of campus, and into the nearby Memorial Student Union Building. It was possibly almost too late to register for the Fall semester classes, which, as far as he knew, could have already started without him knowing it. Maybe his new journey would have to develop a better timing mechanism.
David’s transfer from Springvale to the Orono campus had been a complicated one. Money? Not quite enough. Distractions? Way too many. Courses? He had finally declared a major area of study, and The University of Maine – Orono Campus had a slightly wider selection of course offerings. Girls? Friends? No one special, and a few surface social surfers, in that order. The only things of importance he left behind in Springvale were some eye-opening experiences for this fresh-off-the-farm college kid, and the painful memories that accompanied a good number of them. No longer a foolish Fresh-man, and yet still, inwardly, very Sophomoric, he was now ready for his third year of post-secondary study.
With the university transfer completed, it was time to start over. Start simple. Three summer months spent haying fields and delivering newspapers had given David an adequate amount of time to focus. “Focus on what?” he had asked himself on Memorial Day. By Labor Day, he had formalized and initiated a plan: “Focus on me. My dreams, thoughts, plans, ambitions.” This upcoming period of life was to be his “bildungsroman,” his own coming-of-age transformation. He imagined himself breaking away from the antiquated belief systems of his family, former teachers and tyrants, his books-a-billion collection, pastors and priests to whom he had sold various soul parts, and the humiliating hurts that only haunt the heart. He was going to “break past his belief barriers” and start simpler. So what did he have left, to lose or to gain?
He had music. Lots of it. Even before he was out of high school, he had written at least one hundred songs, and even continued to appreciate, and play, about half of them. There were a few short stories he had written in Springvale, at the behest not of an English instructor, but an exotic, surrealistic psychology professor.
He had passion and romance. Or at least, a small collection of near-misses with the misses in that category of experience. So he planned to turn that passion into one in which he would romance himself, his artistic creations, much like Thoreau’s romantic adventures included all of Nature, yet very few humans.
And now he had his “most likely” declared major, “Comparative Religions.” What he was going to do as far as a career with this degree and background did not yet matter to him. He wanted to know what people believed. Above all else, he was passionate about what people believed. And why. If he could pull off a double, or even a triple major, he would also engorge his brain on “World Philosophies” and “Psychotherapeutic Techniques.” To David the searcher, all three areas represented what people believed. About God. About themselves. About health and illness. The whole human spectrum.
So, life was going to be simple. He again pondered those first few journal scratchings. He would focus his study. He would write, and play, more music, hopefully finding some other students who shared his particular musical direction, and he would dig deep, and suck all the marrow out of Thoreau’s famous bone of life. And yet, he had to continue to keep it simple. That was key. Always search for the simple.
Joanna Christine was not a newbie. Nor was she an old-bie. She was a may-bie. Maybe she would get a chance to finally complete her degree here in Orono. Maybe she would get a chance to show some independence from the family fortune. Maybe, just maybe, her life path would turn out to be one of her own creation. Her own walk in the woods, the wild woods, away from the dare-you and scare-you of often hysterical helicopter parents.
In these woods, would she be allowed to take the road less traveled, and maybe make a difference? A difference not in dollars, but in destiny? She had long felt an inner calling, a mission, a magnificent obsession with directing her very own creative energies into the lives of those not born into financial complacency. Even though Daddy was pretty rich and Momma was definitely good-looking, there hung a great melancholy over their many mansions.
In any of the many towns which she had reluctantly called “home”, she always saw a great divide, both physically and socially. Maybe some train tracks dividing “north side” from “south side.” Maybe a collection of suburbs, some with swimming pools in the back, others with fire hydrants in the front. And maybe a school system not designed for the education of the masses, but rather a separation of the classes.
As she headed over to the course registration desks in the Memorial Student Union Building, the most relevant center of life on this campus, she pondered her purpose, her need, her “want to” versus “have to” in life at this age, this stage. Was she a person capable of positively altering that “Great Social Divide” that unfortunately seemed so ever-present in this supposedly “United” States of America? United? Not so much. “Melting Pot”? More a cauldron of carnage, boiling over with rage. “Cradle of Democracy”? A broken crib of confusion and collusion.
Anyway, who was she to think that a young, single, female product of wealth could ever become any more than a useful cog in the machinery of a new day, a fresh dawn?
What had inspired her, or depressed her, over the summer? Was it avoidance rather than pursuit that motivated her? Had she read something in Richard Bach that spoke of cosmic romance? Had she overdosed on too many of California’s new age trends, only to face the cleansing mental enema of Jed McKenna? Was it the moments of calm while breathing in the inspirations of Virginia Satir? She read a lot, but did she live a lot?
No, she thought, life should be simpler than all this. Simpler for me, simpler for others, simpler to choose that less traveled road. Her road now ran through, she herself drove through, a near-desolate desert, upper Maine. Her well-traveled route started in Portland West, and now she was just a few miles past Portland East. She was about to begin her third year in Bangor.
So, finally, hopefully, life was going to be simpler. She would focus on her own breakaway system of study. She would write, and maybe get a chance to play, more music, more art, more dance, hopefully finding some other renegade students who shared her particular artistic interests and inner calling. She would lift firmly, and remove all those heavy stones from Frost’s famous fences of division. And yet, she promised herself, she had to continue to keep it simple. That was key. Always search for the simple.
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