2001-04-30 - 10:39 a.m.

First, a happy belated birthday to David Grainger, who is quite clearly awesome, and now also 25.

And now...

Eric, Carolyn and our hero in the Diaryland of Chalk Drawings

-or-

Just Kidding, It Was Awesome

(A Diaryland Exclusive!)

I go to Indiana for the weekend, where a couple old college friends of mine live. Suburban living has turned them into a couple of squares � marriage, the baby, a managerial role in the local chain bookstore, the whole bit. The wife spends most of her time obsessing over their latest furniture.

Their neighborhood is a real charmer. Look out across their �Indian Lakes� subdivision (perhaps this area once was home to an Indian lake, but now it has been replaced by rows of apartments and retention ponds for the local waste) and you can catch a glimpse of Wal-Mart in the distance, just beyond the traffic light. Convenient.

We want to catch a bite before heading off to the �entertainment,� so we stop at a local burrito shop. The place is as devoid of color as I have ever seen in a restaurant. If it were not for the tables set up along one wall, I would think I was in a doctor�s office. But the chips and salsa are free, and they pay for my burrito. Plus, we get to enjoy the sounds of Rush�s �Tow Sawyer� blaring from the kitchen as we enjoy our meal. Thanks, guys.

Then it�s off to the entertainment, which Eric (the husband) has so carefully planned out for us. We head north to a small town in Michigan to spread our love of life. They�re supposed to be having an arts festival, so like good out-of-towners we visit their one art store, insult their art and take their free food. I try to mix with the local color by sharing my yo-yo with the local kids, but time�s a wasting. We sit down at the local theater, where a comedy troupe will be performing. We mock the program. We watch the show, thinking all the while how much better it could be. We mock the audience, calling them pretentious. Carolyn (the wife) catches the irony. Then it's back to the wasteland, where we�

Stop. Back up. Something has happened.

A few hours ago, back at the burrito place, we all started joking about diaryland. They joked that they wanted a good write-up, and I joked that I will insult them, which is what I have been doing. Since I have been writing a lot, and they have been reading it, diaryland has become the topic of the day.

Now, with diaryland on the brain, I am no longer living my life. I am living my diaryland entry. Eric, the master of self-reflexive games, has focused my little game in on itself and rendered it meaningless. Our adventures have become material rather than adventures. And I have been anticipating my story the moment it happens.

And suddenly, with the narrative no longer relegated to the subconscious or the half-conscious, we have become like Simon in the land of chalk-drawings, drawing the landscape as we go, playing an increasingly dominant role in our adventures. We are no longer letting life happen to us. We are deliberately focusing on it, turning it into a game and trying to immediately divine its symbols.

Since I have been writing my life as it happens, I have become attuned to the symbols that fortuitously appear. A dollar bill goes blowing by for me to save, and this is a sign. I find a blue six-sided die on the ground just as I am considering the random possibilities of life, and this is a sign. Now Eric is raising it to the next level, noting the signs so frequently that their meaninglessness becomes apparent. There is a road sign bearing his last name that we pass on each trip to Michigan. He anticipates it and then announces its arrival, calling it an auspicious sign.

After our trip to Michigan, we go for a walk around the lakes of Notre Dame. The place is filled with religious icons, the most overpoweringly symbols of all. At one spot in the woods are three statues � Jesus on the cross, flanked by Mary and Mary Magdalene, we think. There�s �Touchdown Jesus,� a huge mural of Christ that can be seen from the football stadium in the distance. This is the spot in the diaryland entry, Eric suggests, that I reflect on my religious upbringing and come to terms with it, reflect on what�s wrong or right about it. He has infiltrated this entry and is fiddling with the knobs.

We scramble out onto their favorite tree, which hangs silently over the lake under the slivered moon. A few random people try to wander by. Sitting out on this tree reminds me of� Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. The raft, meandering down the Mississippi River with only trees on either side. I am Huck, Carolyn is Jim, only a white, female, pregnant Jim. The symbolism� perhaps I can equate Huck�s 19th century raft journey to my own aimless 21st century journey. Perhaps I could tie in the Rush song �Tom Sawyer� from the burrito place? No, no, no. I need to slap myself out of this.

We leave the tree and go walking in search of a bathroom. I am letting myself get lost in thought, enjoying the feel of my feet swishing against the dirt path. (Swishing? Or is it shuffling?)

�Dave, you notice you�re shuffling your feet?� Carolyn says.

�Yeah. I was just � enjoying the feel of the dirt,� I say.

�He�s trying out adjectives!," Eric announces. "�My feet shuffled along the dirt path.� He�s living his diaryland entry!�

Quit it! I�m trying to have a moment here!

We go into a campus building and I am left alone. I can play this game. I can create my own symbols, my own auspicious signs. I find a vending machine. I will buy something symbolic here, something that will make perfect sense for the moment I am creating. I scan the items � Skittles? An energy drink?

One vending machine has all sorts of random items for sale. I almost settle on the Hi-Liter � perhaps I can use it to highlight important moments somehow. Eric comes by, attuned to the game. He suggests the Chap Stick. Then we see the computer disc. I take out my crinkled dollar, unfold the corners (This is a moment I have already relived and recorded, on audiotape with Eric, by the time of this writing � I have decided, after all, that it will be an �important moment�) and press number 17 (perhaps the significance of the number will reveal itself in the future. The disc comes rolling out of its coil and clammers down to the bottom of the vending machine. I pick it out with its label from among the candy crumbs and wrapper bits and take out my pen. I write on the label, �Dave�s First Book (No Pressure)� and slap the label on the disc, and throw the disc into my pocket, and now the die is cast.

Now I am living not only my diaryland entry but also my first book, but what I really need to be living is my life. Now nothing can be done just for the fun of it. We play Boggle, then search for the significance of the words. And if I can�t discover the significance of the Boggle words, I will write about the futility of searching for meaning in the random, about the impossibility of the hero trying to notice the foreshadowing of his own story, to be participant, observer and director all at once. I have to step back, stop this self-reflexive crap that turns my life into a hall of mirrors that makes everything meaningless. I must restore the illusion.

So the next morning we wake up and head for the authentic experience I have been waiting for, a trip to Ganges, Michigan, a place that Eric has been hyping for years as a haven for peace and meditation. In those years, Ganges has grown ever more splendid in my mind, turned into a peaceful little village with canals and a Buddhist temple on every corner, where everybody walks around in robes or just naked, and they spend most of their time sitting under a tree and becoming enlightened.

That�s not quite how it turns out. We drive up this little path toward the Interfaith chapel, the center of the action, past an unused concession stand. We walk out to the Labyrinth, pass the little donation box and begin our walk. It�s a dandelioned path with tufts of grass on either side, and we must follow its twists and turns until we eventually reach the center, where stands a flag bearing the image of the Earth (not the moon as I originally thought) and this is, perhaps, another symbol. Another knock-you-on-the-head symbol, crying out to you, �Have an experience! Have an experience!� but fortunately we are smart enough to realize that the purpose of this walk is to realize its purposelessness, despite the prize of the flag at the end, that just noticing your footsteps and the grass and the air is what you�re supposed to notice.

We come out of the Labyrinth and we peek in on some meditation huts, where there is a rocking chair and some picture albums and some statues. I look around for the sign that says, �Have an experience here.�

Then, before we peek into the chapel and head home, we go for a walk in the woods. A walk in the woods is a must for a meditative place, only here, with every other step one must read one of the dozens of inspirational quotes that are nailed to the trees. Some are faded and some are falling off the trees, and you don�t even have a chance to digest one sign before you come up to the next, and they all seem to be saying something to the tune of, �Have an experience on your walk in the woods!� We sit down at a bench, and I joke that the only sign that means anything to me here is the one that is sitting upside-down, fallen from the tree, which I have not read yet. Because maybe I can make this one my auspicious sign.

Eric picks up the sign and we see that it reads �Poison Ivy � Stay on the Path.� And of course we all laugh, because this was funny, but also because maybe it is an auspicious sign, the first honest-to-goodness real sign we�ve seen all weekend. Maybe it�s telling me to stay on the path, and not go wandering off, knocking on false doors, searching for things beyond that will just foul me up. And don�t go looking for inspiration from the signs that other people have nailed on the trees, just keep on the path and you�ll find it in your own good time.

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