Wild Geese

"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves…"

Felt ambitious the other night, so I decided to take a couple journeys. One into a very real place, and another into one…not quite so real, but real enough all the same. Of the later, I can admit only to the following; that it is a journey I have taken many a time, in many a place, stretching way way back, throughout my years. So far back, in fact, that it seems as though I have been taking the journey even before I existed in this fleshy body– which, of course, is just a ruse; brought on by how close and endeared this journey is to me. Because it’s a journey I have taken since I was a child, I am tempted to call it nostalgia– but it is something much, much more.

As I’m sure you’re well aware yourself, the nights have been exceedingly warm. So when the sun went down, and ceased alerting the world to my presence, I packed some meager supplies into a water bottle (my only source of container), and hopped on the old cycle; vacating my tiny, sterile apartment. The evening air was still as thick as sap, but slipped easily enough across me as I coasted through town. The smells were of humid sulfur and teenage years, and the clickity-clickity-clickity of my spokes were welcomed foreground music. Behind it, the city kept it’s usual ambient track; distant car engines, and the din of folks lurking just out of sight. Downtown was it’s typical blaring-lights unenchanting self, but It didn’t particularly matter…as I had a very specific destination in mind, and town was but a place to be left behind. Eventually I made it to the fringes, and crossed the dark quiet expanse that segued the city into the old resort community, and at last found myself trespassing amongst the old oak trees, and the tucked away ginger bread houses. Having no real cognitive map of the place by daylight, it all seemed very new to me– possibility tucked behind every shadow– and the weaving patchwork quality of the narrow streets, combined with the hanging fairy lanterns on distant porches beyond the long grassy lawns, made it all seem very surreal-storybook to me. Anything seemed possible– a vital sensation and frame of mind for my cause– and as I glided through the streets with my head cocked firmly to the side, I imagined all of the wonderful and amazing things that were going on behind those twinkling lights, in those cozy little homes. I was but a hobbit trespassing in the land of the elves; a pauper in the dark, glancing at satin and lace through distant windows…just like it was when I was a kid.

See I grew up relatively poor, in an extremely wealthy town. Such a condition has befallen many a person over the years…and was even the subject of Charles Dicken’s "Great Expectations," a story that I adore…but don’t quite relate to. Although it has a very tangible effect on a person, that effect can vary, depending on the individual. Many I imagine, like Pip from the Dicken’s story, find themselves instilled with a sense of longing and ambition– a hunger to have that which they were denied as children, but had dangled just in front of their faces instead. For me, it had a different effect. Rather than conjure frustration or inadequacy, I became, instead, insatiably curious (often at my own peril). What would it be like to live in one of those houses, I wondered? What sorts of things happened beyond those long yards; those wrap-around porches; those silken drapes? When I was a kid I imagined all sorts of things from the invisible barrier at the sidewalk; giant rooms painted baby blue, with old fashioned toys like blocks, rocking horses, and doll houses. Through puberty, sexual overtones began influencing my fantasies about upper-class living, and I’d picture prince and princess like adolescents in canopy beds. Beautiful, elegant, gentile people; long feet protruding from long nightgowns, gliding soundlessly across the smooth wooden floors of their estates, as they made the candle-lit journey down to the kitchen from their sleeping quarters for a midnight snack. I’d pedal, and I’d observe, and I’d dream…and never have I found a more sublime happiness than that.