Tonto Enamorado
One can be forgiven such trivial transgressions, but only insofar as one is willing to admit the silliness.
Bitterness and long distance driving make for odd bedfellows. There were intervals when the weight of disillusion made a led limb of the foot and my surroundings became nothing more than screen savers for windows. At other times I would fall into the deep recesses of the interminable and could do little else than ponder what even was the fucking point of the trip.
This would probably be a good time to mention that my sole traveling companion throughout the whole thing was a stuffed turtle I had been given by my sister and mother god knows when ago. Her name is Nturtle. Well, she grew pretty tired of my complaining, even as I directed it at the camera of my phone.
You understand you’ve sounded like just the biggest of baby back bitches throughout this whole thing, yes? I would advise you to refrain from droning on about this with Josh once we land.
The authority with which it traveled from Nturtle’s lips to my ears communicated that no argument was to be brooked. Indeed, I’ve learned, in my years, that when your stuffed turtle makes a prescient point such as this, you ought to follow it. I mean, I didn’t, but at least I know how to recognize that I should have.
My stop back with Josh was wonderful. Human company, civilization, sleep in a comfortable couch. It was what I had been missing, materially. But maybe also otherwise? I mean, the lion’s share of my social well-being had been the undertaking of Nturtle, so there’s something there.
We talked about any number of things, Josh and I, but I guess the most important thing I remember is just the feeling of having someone to share the moment with. Even the complaining of my terrible time sounded sweeter in the reflection of his chuckles. It brought back to mind what times had been like for me the fall before when I tried to spend a month away from home.
A friend I’d met before the pandemic had found a job in his actual career in Michigan and had been so kind as to allow me use of his spare bedroom. He couldn’t drink during the week because of work, and I was trying not to. It worked out wonderfully. The premise was that I would work on a book I’d started during the week and he and I would party hardy on the weekends.
It sounded fun enough, and it certainly was for the few days I was there. A nagging notion of loss had started descending on me, though. It would be one of the first times I would notice the incalculable depths with which one can miss family. At the peak of this, my sister called me in the middle of the night, wailing into the phone because one of our dogs had died. I stole away in the pale dark and didn’t stop until I was in the driveway. (I mean, I obviously had to for gas and shit [literally]; don’t be a smart ass).
One of these things is not like the other.
It seems the most obvious of conclusions that things carry in life, but we never seem to consider it. We talk ad nauseam about the things we despise, what bothers us, and the difficulties in any sort of meaningful fix. In the immediate eyesight of it, they’re hardly our own fault— these problems find us. Why would we go looking for something that seems to have only one goal, namely a hindrance. To what, then, can we attribute this seemingly magnetic quality?
It would be myopic to say the sticky spots are enjoyed. Situational necessities to pit our better natures against worst to prove that mutually assured destruction is not in the cards? Maybe, but even that seems too easy, and you don’t get credit for cleaning up your own mess.
Camping should’ve been a clear winner to acquire even the most basic of appreciations for the land provided, but even this devolved into an acrimonious experience. And why? Because I underestimated the drawing power of the Grand Tetons. I gave too much cushion the result of which was my believing that without a tangible goal in mind of hunting/fishing/et al., the only reason to venture into the wilderness was for a change of scenery in drinking, fucking, or both.
Bitterness is never truly bottled.
Departures make for great jumping off points as far as grasping what would otherwise have been left behind. As I make my way back, thankful that at least I don’t have to book it for life, I try to come to terms with a few things.
One of those is that maybe it turns out I was just mad the whole time. I was distraught with myself, with the situations I had thrust upon me by my own naivety emblematic of unfounded arrogance in perceived emotional intelligence. I had felt some injustice visited upon me by impossible circumstances of history: there’s no way I can be blamed for this. But I could be, and I knew it, too, but I figured that avoiding the predictable lash out had saved me from scrutiny. I hadn’t avoided it, though, I hadn’t even come close. Even the manner in which I had redirected it, sent it flying in the face of a city and people who had done nothing but let me in at the wrong time was hackneyed.
Nature and travel, here were two decorated chefs allowing me a taste of splendor. I greedily accepted, forgetting that all bites taken in rancor can taste only of ash. And I threw my plate in childish fit, calling the lovely hosts charlatans and pretenders for not having been able to serve me with everything I sought and thereby loudly stating they hadn’t been found. They couldn’t be.
The truth is, though, I did find all these things, but I didn’t find them in the places I expected. The mental cleanse was decoded in the words of Villette as I read on my final night in the valley; solace blanketed me as the sun dipped on my return with dusk carpeting in cool violets the road in cool violets as soft as velvet. I couldn’t expect nature to take responsibility for my inability to recognize my own source of happiness; if it was indifferent to my plight, so too just it necessarily be indifferent to my joys.
The things that I wanted, the things I sought to fix me were the things I’d always loved. It wasn’t that they had failed me, it’s that I had forgotten them; forgotten myself. I stared at the mountains and waited for them to say something to me, not realizing that you can’t have dialogue with a silhouette. A hollow can only echo something, never contribute. I was waiting to be made whole by the filling I’d wandered away from; the cookie cutter warbling away from the dough.
What I had wanted and needed had always been around me: friends, family, books. It was me that had left in puerile disinterest searching for “greener grass”. My own sketch of expectations had sabotaged inner comprehension. I had believed a lie constructed of discarded opinions as opposed to a patient truth measured against reality.
Cruise control takes charge and the straight road allowed me free hands to finish reading, these are things to live for (also, don’t read and drive, kids. It’s ridiculously dangerous and wildly irresponsible). In the background, beneath velvet skies of comforting twilight, plentiful tracks of future solace beat against an uncertain future. Somewhere the certitude of halcyon days had been lost and left me seeking to answer an enigma that was likely harmless enough but made terrific by the sheer attempt to understand some imagined hidden truth.