2001-10-03 - 11:11 p.m.

oh so you got the boot? oh, ok.

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The season slips away, the project crumbles. Any sense of greater meaning has disappeared. The drive to save the world has given way to morally ambiguous pleasure-seeking, and even that pleasure has not been fulfilled. I have hopped from boulder to boulder as each sinks into the soup and I find I will never reach the other side, there is no other side, and you never get to advance.

The good news is that today is another day. I can clear the slate again, leave behind old obligations and start from scratch once again, as I always do, I can always try again. I need to find new directions to my energies, new causes to believe in, to try to believe in.

I gather my courage and head out the door. So many failures behind me, but today is a new day. I set off on a new adventure. I will go to the jazz fest.

Fenced inside a garden block from my house are two members of the local Green Party with a tent. I know them; they come to the COURAJ meetings that I have long since abandoned. They�re here all weekend, protesting the sanctions and bombings in Iraq and chatting with whoever passes by.

Yesterday I avoided them. I was the guy who had shown up to some meetings, said little, did nothing to help, and stopped showing up. I was embarrassed to show my self to these two people who give their time and effort to a cause they believe in, extend a hand for me to take, only to find me hesitating at every turn because I�m too comfortable, too unwilling too commit, too afraid to believe in anything.

But today I steel myself and walk up to their encampment, and they smile at me as they always do and extend me a warm greeting.

�Dude!� Steve says to me. �How you doing!�

Steve smiles at me without reservation as usual. He�s a man of endless zeal, a believer in the rightness of his path, willing to give every ounce of energy to it and spouting goodwill and apologies at every turn.

But I will make the apologies today, which I do, muttering some vague excuse for my lack of activism, telling him I�ve been figuring some things out, but I want to be involved again, I�m just not that good at it. He keeps smiling and saying that�s cool. He�s extending that hand again and all is forgotten, he will keep extending it to me until I take it. He bubbles with energy, tells me about the press conference and the demonstration they held, no media coverage, sure, but a good effort, a cry in the wilderness to get their voices heard. His energy is unflagging, he takes on all the burdens of the world he can handle on his back, and does it with a smile.

�I think you need to join the Green Party,� he says.

�I think you�re right,� I say. I sign his forms, take his leaflets. There�s a meeting on Thursday. Fine, I say. I will do it. I will try to believe again, try to help. I know I can do it. I wish them good day.

As I board the train for the jazz fest, I feel that a new day has begun again. In the hint of a new beginning, optimism has suddenly returned. The goal of saving the world, long abandoned in the quest to save myself, suddenly seems achievable again. Perhaps the project can be salvaged after all.

Ah, but to make it work, I must keep in mind what I have learned. I must not lay back and say, yes, I have decided, and now everything will be all right. I must believe that today is the only day, I must maintain constant vigilance in the quest of self-fulfillment.

The world awaits me at the Jazz fest. People strolling about, lazing out on blankets, enjoying the summer�s last hurrah. People to practice on, to be a part of, to communicate with somehow. People to not be afraid of.

I walk down the walkway through the crowds to the end, where a vendor sells his five dollar beer. On the stage in the distance, hardly visible from here, someone is playing the violin. Closer, traveling from picnic blanket to picnic blanket, is a man with a large sign that reads, �The Message given by Extra-Terrestrials: At Last! Science Replaces Religion.� And everywhere there are people.

It�s a sea of people, talking amongst themselves, enjoying themselves, unaware that I am here. I am a ghost in their midst, but I must make myself real. I stand with my feet at the edge of the walkway, staring nervously at the edge of the pool like a child learning to dive, hoping the water will not be too cold.

I dive in. I slide into a spot of grass a safe distance from other people, but not too distant.

�Excuse me. Do you know who this is?� I ask a lady sitting on a blanket a few yards behind me.

�I�m not sure,� she says. �Some sort of jazz violinist.�

We talk for a minute about jazz, which neither of us seem to know much about. Just words, words about nothing, no matter what. We have acknowledged our mutual existence, we may not ever meet again but we are on the same world and we have proven that everyone we see here are actual people, people who we could, hypothetically, communicate with.

So I have had a victory, a miniscule victory. I celebrate it for a moment, sit back and enjoy the music. But I must find new adventures. I get up and look around � I think I�ll track down the man with the extra-terrestrial sign. But he seems to have disappeared.

I wander down the pathway away from the stage. A group of four girls are gathered in the grass, deciding what to do. A perfect chance to interact. I deliver my killer pickup line.

�Excuse me. Did you guys see a man go by here carrying a sign about extra-terrestrials and religion?�

The line works perfectly. They don�t know where the extra-terrestrial guy is. But they talk to me, ask me where the good music�s playing. Turns out they�re visiting from Tennessee. They only have so much time, so one girl is anxious to get moving.

�It seems like I have more energy than you guys lately,� she says.

�Oh, come on,� another says. �I just want to make sure we know where we�re going before we go somewhere.�

They chatter like this for a moment, undecided on their next move. There is tension between them. I remain in their presence, momentarily forgotten as they sit and stall. I see that I am not required here, thank them for their help and move on.

It�s going to take a lot of these tiny victories before I can move onto the larger ones, I can tell. So while I have the spirit, I try to find as many opportunities as I can. I wander over to Buckingham Fountain, a massive spout of ornate stone and water that draws tourists from all over to take pictures in front of. A group of tourists ask me to take their picture, and I do. We smile at one another, they thank me, I am elated.

It only takes a few minutes before I find another group whose pictures I can take. I ask them where they are visiting from.

�From India,� the man says.

�India? You mean you flew over from India to visit?�

�Yes.�

�That must have been quite a trip.�

I�m such a fool. But at least I�m a friendly fool. I love doing things like this, when I can get up the courage. I love having the feeling that I�m not completely alien, that I could talk to and understand people. I wish I could shatter forever that aloneness that I so often feel in the company of others, that we�re all stuck on the same planet but we�re not willing to share it.

But there are people who are outgoing, who will smile and crack a joke at a complete stranger. Those are the good people of the world, the people who are trying in a million little ways to make the world more hospitable, to open up the spirit of humanity. I envy those people. I�m not one of them, but I�m trying to be.

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