To The Person I Drove 17 Hours To Spend 3 More Days With

I think it's important to remember that while you're going through all of this turmoil (which is an excellent word, btw, it's like what happens when a disc runs over a field and turns over the soil), to enjoy it. This is always the hardest part to do, but this is part of it. Whatever it is.

Restlessness. I know this so well in my own ways. Going from one place to another, from one plan to another.. for awhile back there from one relationship to another. I've run away from so many things in my life. It really wasn't until I started practicing mindfulness every day that I was able to watch that restlessness inside of me. As part of my University schooling, I went through a mindfulness-based stress reduction program and it was transformational. Simple being still in my body while watching all that's moving inside me allowed me to move so much this summer. What did it bring me? A lot of time with myself in a brand new place where I can't help but be with myself. While it gets to be lonely at times, I'm truly loving this time.

It's amazing what humans are willing to give away in hope of finding something better. It's so easy to carry around an urgency that tears us away from what needs time to develop. It's also so easy to convince ourselves that we can't go to what calls to us from the other side of the border between what is known and unknown.

It's critically important to remember that all of this is part of it. I hardly know how to respond to hearing you say that I'm some mystical dude who belongs in a messy tent or in a packed up car out on the road. I think there's a part of me that very much belongs in that mode- and that's how it feels to me, a mode. A way of being, a way of setting sail and going out, out, out. But every ship has to find a harbor now and again. Sometimes I can get awfully caught up in what's going on at the ports I stop at... There can be this feeling that comes over me when I've been out on the road for a long time and it came to visit me while I was swimming out in the ocean near Costa Rica. It's the feeling that all I'm really doing is floating and being tossed around a bit in the waves. Then I crave the shore. I don't want to be an island. I care about People with a capital P. I don't want to be another self-serving guy out in the world. There's far too much of those. It's only us here on this tiny blue planet and it just makes me sick to my stomach sometimes, the things I see while I'm out in the road and I don't see any way to change it other than to set up in some place and try to make that place a little better. I suppose it's the beautiful things on the road I see that give me the hope that I can actually make that change.

What would it take for me to not be okay? Losing hope. Losing the faith that things will get better. Believing the best is behind me. For a long time, I believed that this was true for me when it came to love. I didn't believe that I would ever be able to love someone the way I loved this one particular person. I believed that I had missed my chance to be with someone like that. It fucking broke me. When it hit me that it was over, I shattered. I didn't sleep for weeks at a time. Only a few hours a week. I'd stay up in the middle of the night looking out my window as every night the world around me got colder and I'd be tormented by these thoughts that I had really fucked this whole thing up and that it was over. I could hardly eat and between the loss of appetite and the stress I was under with these thoughts (not to mention writing my thesis). I lost 15% of my body weight. I felt like I had no place in life. Nowhere to go from there.

Albert Camus says the only true philosophical question is whether or not life is worth living in The Myth of Sisyphus. He argues that most people stay alive simply out of habit. I think that he is right. When I think of what really kept me going during that time (which, btw, was this time last year) was my habits. I went to work every day out of habit. I ran after work every day out of habit. I practiced meditation every day out of habit. And then there was art. I found that the only way for me to escape from the torment of my thoughts was to write them down. To try to peel away all the deceptions and leave nothing but what felt like the truth on the pages.

…

This time, as I read your letter from my desk at work, I could once again feel the warm embrace of your care wrapping its arms around me and pulling me close to your heart. How grateful I am to be so lucky as to be near a heart as .... to be near your heart. I have no proper adjective to describe your heart, your capacity to love and feel makes words futile devices, as Sufjan Stevens would say. I feel it extremely difficult to write to you know because I truly just wish to be there with you, but I don't want to write a letter telling you how much I miss you, either. I will, however, tell you this:

The reason why I love you so much is because you take so long to answer in order to write back from a place of calm and meditation. To take the time and intention and be there again with me, as I am in the memories we share. To reconnect with the laughter and to not forget that laughter is what it all comes down to. How we roared with laughter!! These memories came flooding back into my veins as I read them. It makes me so fulfilled to know that these memories are not so far from you now, and that you are continuing to bring that radiant joy with you wherever your bike around town. The levity and joy of your being is contagious and I love it so much.

One of my favorite memories of us laughing was when we were hiking at Point Reyes with XXXX and XXXXX after I picked you up from that absurd farm. We were out on the trail and you were putting something in my backpack and I, impatient as I am, tried to pull something out to make room for you, to which you responded sarcastically, "now is a good time to pull out" and we laughed so loud that the boys ahead of us turned around in the way that all humans do in order to witness (and hopefully, partake) in the joy of other people. Sometimes I feel as if there was a small slice of the world that was made just for us and when we laughed it would expand and envelope us and all that surrounded us. This is the true magic of the world and why life is worth living.

The future

The tips of my fingers touch the teardrop of my lips as I look out from the top of the mountain. Before me I see a young woman whose long blonde hair reaches down to the tattoo on her back and reads "we live by the sun; we feel by the moon." She's running through a tall field of grass that comes up to her knees but not to her skirt. She looks back at me over her shoulders and calls out for me to come with her. To my right, another young woman stands at a stove, stirring a pot of Indian curry in her black turtleneck. She leans forward and let's the steam carry the spices up to her nose. She smiles at receiving the scent and opens her eyes to look at me, inviting me to her dinner table: elegant and expensive. "come eat with me" she says. I turn to my left and see the citadels of Spain and the ancient churches and hear the laughter of Spanish speaking children, singing songs and playing games. They run up to a schoolhouse and grab their books. They show them to me and ask me, in Spanish, if I will read to them. I look to the East and I see the bustling city of Tokyo, with it's organized chaos pulsing at the edge of what a society can truly be. The designs on the buildings and of the streets mesmerize me in their simplicity and brilliance, and I wish to be lost in the maddening swim of people.

I stand still on top of the mountain, not daring to lean my weight too heavily in any direction, for I know that any movement will lead me cascading down the mountain where the promise each direction holds is waiting for me. I also know that going in one direction is a rejection of all the others and so I am paralyzed. Every day my roots grow deeper. I look just behind me and I see a fig tree, slowly dropping it's fruit. I know I must choose.

So much love,

Roman

P.S. How many times did we end up saying goodbye? You always left me with a feeling that you’re still near, that we’re still standing on that San Francisco street in front of the laundry mat, where someone pulling a soft sweater out of the dryer may have known how we felt.