How It Started

At that time in my life I had exactly three friends, and all three of them insisted that I had to make a change. "Quit your job," said Ingrid. "Sell your condo," said Charles. "Move to Northern California," said Terry.

It's true that I had become an aimless nobody. Only a few years earlier I had been quite an eclectic young man with quite an inquisitive young mind. I dabbled a little in mysticism, business, gambling, painting, snorkeling, gardening. I worked as a burger cook, a telemarketer, a copy editor, and a travel writer. I spent time in bookstores and bars. I pondered the origins of the universe, the nature of humanity, the mysteries of the gods. None of these endeavors got me very far, I will admit, but they were interesting, empowering, inspiring nonetheless. The changes kept me alert, kept me growing and learning. And people liked me. They said I made them happy.

But then it ended. Maybe it was the breakup with Margie that did it, maybe it was just the stagnation that comes with burnout or exhaustion. Whatever the cause, I had settled into a routine. And I'm the kind of guy for whom a routine is a rut. I was just entering my thirties, heading towards my prime, but I moped and grumbled like a tired old man. I was the dullest of the dulls. You'd ask me a simple question and I'd shrug. You'd try to cheer me and I'd yawn. But I trusted my friends. So I quit my job, sold my condo, and moved to Northern California.

And it seemed just what I needed. I got me a little apartment with a little lawn and little garden. I got me some leads on good jobs in good offices for good companies. And everything around me felt new, and young, and alive. There was a fusion of city, country, sky, sea, and spirit that reawakened my sleeping desires to really truly try to find that goodness, that beauty, that holiness, that truth. I knew it was out there. And this time I wouldn't give up until I found it. But I didn't want to go it alone. And it seemed the greatest day of my life, that day in the Vomero Cafe, the day I met Marilyn.

"Can I buy you another cup?" she asked me. "You're almost out."

I looked up from my book and my coffee. A beautiful woman stood above me. "Sure," I said. "Thanks. And... join me?"

Join me she did, and we talked for three hours. She told me about her life, split between wannabe painter and haftabe secretary. She was originally from the Midwest, and was three years in California. She lived alone in a one-bedroom, using the bedroom as her studio.

"What do you paint?" I asked her.

"Whatever's not real," she answered. "Dreams, myths, monsters, ghosts, other worlds, the past, the future. Anything deliberately impossible."

"Reality's not good enough?"

She shrugged. "Not good enough for me."

"Ever think there's really something more?"

"More than the here and now? More than the material world?"

"Yeah, ever believe it? I mean really believe it deep down?"

"Not often enough." She munched a breadstick. "I think that's why I paint."

"You don't know for sure?"

"It's unhealthy to know yourself too well. That would mean no surprises."

I nodded. "I agree. I think what I like best in life is surprise, newness, and change."

I watched her smile. I liked her a lot, and she seemed to like me. Our broadest common ground was literature. We shared a love for Rabelais, Langland, Byron, Cervantes, Joyce, Pynchon -- their great works full, dense, mammoth, overflowing, yet possessing a feel of unlimited untapped potential. These works pictured the world as we did, imaging bright neomythic organicism married to dark fragments and chaos. Our conversation deepened.

"It's this interplay of pattern and nothingness that speaks to me the most," she said. "Where we go about our lives trying to keep a sense of order, or at least direction, but underneath there are unexpected accidents or calamities ready to trip us up at any time."

"And it works the other way," I added. "Surrounded by an overload of discrete dissolute bits and pieces that are accidents in themselves, but we can navigate pathways through them if we try, setting viable goals or destinations, even if these goals and destinations are of only limited or transient value. Don't stake too much on any particular telos, or we'll lose our mobility and our tact. But don't fixate too long on the surrounding mess, or we'll lose our power to believe in anything at all, and without this power we stagnate."

She nodded. "Make choices, but keep an open mind."

"Make connections, but break them if you must," I said. "I believe this."

She smiled. "You're sexy when you're smart."

I Grouchoed my eyebrows. "I've been known to wax genius."