Powder Daze.

In life we are all creatures of organization. Since we were small children we are taught to makes plans, we have ideas, we make goals, we have desires, we spend most of our day daydreaming about what we want, what we want to be, where we want to be, what we want to see, what we want to have. We spend years building this mental path in our own minds and we feel guilt when we stray from the path. We feel  commitment to this ghost plan.

Until one day, one trip, one person, one song, one idea serves as a catalyst and changes everything. This one thing has the power to stop you dead in your mental track and wipes the entire track clean. It scares the shit out of most of us and we do not know what to do with ourselves. There are usually two choices that linger in this precise moment. One…..you can embrace the unknown and take a leap and create a new life, a new path, a new goal or none at all….simply live. Two, you can run unforgivingly back to the old path and commit fully to it, never to stray so intensely from it again and live a very structured and maintained lifestyle.

Well I have strayed. I think I have strayed for quite some time. And I will admit it’s frightening at times and highly stressful. I have my self doubts at times, but in the end the rewards are much higher than the risks.

Right now I am in Vail, Colorado. It’s 7 am and I am awake staring at the window of my apartment. There is fresh snow on the ground, icicles hanging ominously in my window; it is what we call a powder day. Fresh tracks are ready to be made and the mountain will be opening soon. I live here, I tell myself that every day, because it is still so unreal. I’m 26 and I have not a cent to my name, my car is almost at its wit end, I did not know a soul here and I am completely fulfilled and happy here. I am surrounded by 18-22 year olds that are out here on a break, or finishing up school and having one last ho-rah. But this is me, this is not a last anything or a first, there is no break, there is no looming plan. This is it, and after this…….no idea. This move is not a self actualizing period although it may turn out to be.

I used to be a planner. I used to be that career go getter. I strived for academic achievement and I gained it. I strived for success in the corporate world, and I gained it. But out of those achievements I did not find myself..... I just gained an experience. You know I have no idea what the future holds, I do not have a plan like I used to, I don’t have an idea of where or what I will be doing next year like I used to. But I will adapt to change and I will just enjoy the ride. And to be honest…..when you give up on ‘the path’ you’ll find that your life will somewhat make one of its own without even informing you.

It will be scary to find yourself alone in the forest searching for a marker, but that is when you will experience the most intense utopic experiences. They won’t happen unless your mind is open to them. So that’s where I will be but right now all that I plan on is fresh snow, walks down white train tracks, long rides up the gondola, cold days and runny noses, making exceptional Eskimo like connections in the cold, breaking icicles, having snow ball fights, making pb & j’s, and carving my way off the mountain everyday on my board. That is good enough for me, that is my world at the moment. It is perfect in fact.

Life is beautiful and inspiring when you drop everything and just allow your life to create itself. You’d be surprised how perfect the world is when you stop having expectations and allow yourself to experience what fate has in store for you. Those dreams that only you see, behind closed eyes, they aren’t always fictitious, sometimes their just life’s way of telling you to wander off the path for a bit………just do it.

Closure.

          There are some things in this world I will never understand. I will never understand biochemistry or the table of elements, I will never understand the quadratic formula or why E=mC2, I will also never understand war or hatred or voluntary death. Most of all I will never understand the dynamics of my mother’s brain.

          This is a much more weighty blog than usual, and for most it might seem out of character for me. I know that most of you characterize me as a generally cheerful person, and I am. I try to find the beauty in everything, and the light in the typical day…… which is not at all a hard thing to do if you just keep your mind and heart open.

        But before the positivity in my mind was born, there was a really really dim period in my life. A childhood where each day wasn’t marked by the colors, lyrics, and laughs but by torment and misapprehension. But in no way am I writing this to ask for pity and understanding. I write it because if you are taking the time to read it you need to know who I truly am and know that I am truly confused. I truly would like to understand just what it is that makes my mother a disturbed woman, a woman scorned, a woman with so many deep and tragic problems.

      The reason I even bring this up is because today I received a very random phone call. My uncle whom I was close to as a kid, but have lost touch with over the years called me. I missed the phone call but when I checked my messages the only words I heard in the scrambled message were liver failure, and “I thought you would want to know”. I knew this day would come of course because my mother lived inside a whiskey bottle for most of my childhood. I know it’s been eight years since I have seen her, but I doubted that anything had changed. Anyhow I called him back and sure enough she had called him from the hospital to let him know that her liver was indeed failing.

       What struck me at that moment was the fact that he said she called him. Even in this dire of a situation when maybe she thought it could be the last call, she didn’t mention my name she didn’t think to ask my uncle or the nurse to call her one daughter. Even at that moment. I do not understand the hatred. And I know that may seem selfish, I know that I shouldn’t be thinking about my own well being in this situation. But I mean…..she created me. And this could be her dis-creation and she did not think to include the one thing she had given life to a call.

       I know my mother had her own dreams as a beautiful artist to do more than have a child in her early twenties, but had I really turned out to be such a disappointment that she’d rather live her life this way…..alone. Was it really her only option to treat me the way she did growing up, doing the things she did. What makes a person have so much hatred towards someone they created? I will never understand her; I tried for many years too. And sadly enough I do not know what will happen today or tomorrow or if she will die with peace or somehow fight the struggle and live. But I am here, I always have been and it breaks my heart to know that people in this world create and duplicate and recreate lives and their own. And they take one another for granted. What is that about? I know each and every one of us has battled our own wars and no one has had a perfect upbringing. We all face our own hardships, but in moments like this I get silent and numb and it’s hard for me to open up. Unless of course it’s through writing.

         Mainly the only purpose of this blog is for me to find some type of closure. I know many friends think I should go see her, but I think it could do more harm than good. I’ve gotten advice to write her a letter, and believe me I would love to but the few of you that know of my mother, sensibility and rationality have nothing to do with her character. A letter would do nothing but anger her, and my presence would possibly send her into theatrical peevishness. So instead I’ll just say it here…..I forgive you mother. I can’t understand you, and I can’t see you, and I can’t hug you or tell you that I love you because I do not really know who you are. But I forgive you, because with all the pain you have caused to myself and others I am more than sure that the pain you endure mentally and physically every day is much much more raw than anything I can fathom.

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Amor Fati
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