2001-08-28 - 7:43 p.m.

Then I�m back. Back in this claustrophobic little apartment five hundred miles from my family, back in this lonely town of unfulfilled potential. I throw down my bag after riding back from the airport and sit down at my desk. It�s early, only eight o�clock, and I�m lonely. I don�t know what to do with myself. I wander through the apartment, the peeling paint, the dirty dishes, the colorless street. I think of Kevin�s home in Beverly, and for the first time, I wish I was back with the family. I want to abandon all this, this experiment of life, and be where I feel like I can belong. Where I don�t feel like a ghost.

I wonder what I hoped for when I moved out here. What did I think would happen? What would make me a new man? What should I have done to make my dreams come true?

-

Undated (Approx. August 23, 1999)

Dear Pappazon,

The relocation has been a successful one so far, more so than I could have imagined. I�ve been in the Midwest a week with Jim + Luke and settled into an outpost in Uptown Chicago. It�s an interesting neighborhood � not in the center of much but just living, but very much in the city � big buildings, beggars, not too many white people. In one door, religious fervor oozes out in the evening with screams of �Hallelujah� from a congregation. One guy was found today laying on the side of the road with his pants down, unconscious, and was carted away by police. We�re a 10-20 minute walk from the action, I�d say, the bookstore/clothing store/bar-type neighborhoods to the south. A few blocks to the east is Lake Michigan, with a nice beach. We live in a 3-br apt. with a big living room.

Thus far, having moved in Friday (today�s Monday) we�ve been populating the apt. with furniture, trying to get phone + gas hooked up, begun looking for jobs. As luck would have it, I�ve gotten a job reporting with the one place I interviewed with; a weekly paper in a northern suburb, kind of a long drive, but it seemed like such a good job, fun, laid-back, well-paying, that I couldn�t pass it up. It feels like it should have been harder than this.

The three of us have been getting along well, walking around the area� They�ve been getting into Magic for some reason (the card game) � Jim decided he would learn it, Luke used to play it a lot. It�s been consuming them every night, I�m hoping interest will burn out all the quicker the more they play � I feel confident it will for Jim�

I join in occasionally in the games � having a job in my pocket, this week is like a vacation. I can do whatever I want, and begin work Monday. I�ve driven all around, walked around the north side, but have yet to ride the �L� or walk around downtown. But there will be time. I live here, after all.

I wonder where you are� perhaps in new Tripoli, perhaps State College, perhaps on to New York. I wish I could be there to offer words of encouragement, but who knows what I would say anyway? Luke and Andy are planning on odd jobs. Luke has a contract in the window washing business, Andy will temp for a bit, then who knows? All I know is that this move was a good idea, the best idea I ever had. All that remains is to meet the love of my life. I�d settle for the love of the moment, anyway. Lots of beautiful people in this city, but I suspect it will not be any easier to meet people. Just bite the bullet, I guess. Something to yearn for, anyway. I need that.

So that�s that. My practical brain is in control for the time being; no time for insights. I can offer no insight as you plan your leap, only well-wishes. We have no phone yet but on September 4th it will be (773)-293-5555, my Email is the same at oldgreedy.juno.com, though I doubt you have it�

Be good! Don�t forget to wash behind you ears, and all that.

Love,

Oldgreedy

-

I come across this letter in my briefcase one day, a letter that was never sent, the first dispatch of a new life beginning. I sit back and let it breathe through me, that sense of the vast empty space of the world, of infinite life, just waiting for the potentiality of it all to pulse through me and fill me up. I let that na�ve young man exist again for a moment, staring off into the open voids of Lake Michigan, imagining the beautiful life that could lay just around the corner. It was a rare moment of being alive, because being alive means not knowing what�s going to happen, it means having that empty page, that unknown landscape spread out before you when you can do anything, turn in any direction, when you feel like you�ve just taken that first bold step in the path of life. But it�s the unknown future that gives life its possibility.

Those words, talking back to me from two years ago. I have suddenly lived a lifetime in Chicago without even realizing it. Two years feels like a long time. I remember walking through Uptown in those first heady days, shouting to Mom and Dad through a pay phone, I�ve found an apartment, I�ve gotten a job, the city is quickly being conquered. And then a week to explore the wild, dirty streets, the unmapped Earth, the life that was just beginning.

I feel that empty space of two years ago now, and look out my window and feel it fill in with reality and disappear, fade away like a dream upon awakening. The outlines of streets are colored in, the blank calendars are filled with moments and tick away, the infinite potential is filled with the meager crumbs of the real life, and never does life seem to hold as much promise as it did last year, or last week, or this morning. I realize I have become a different person; I feel nostalgia for that person that I know was feeling nostalgia himself for lives gone by. I can almost believe that self of two years ago was beautiful, that I always was beautiful. Maybe I can even believe this self of today is beautiful. But it doesn�t make it any easier.

And now, to come across this letter, to examine it and ask that younger self what light it can bring to the struggle. I can smile on that younger self, who exists in that moment of naivete, that sense of, yes, I�ve got it! The world�s been solved! Who calls out to the world: �All I know is that this move was a good idea, the best one I�ve ever had.� The enlightenment of the empty head. Having that one fact and a million variables, life can seem just perfect.

�I wonder where you are,� he asks a friend. Well, I am here, I am the embodiment of all that possibility. Is it worth it? Is it beautiful? I do not know if potential is being filled, if I am living as beautifully as I could. It feels like a moving target. The measurements are shifting, the horizon just keeps getting ever more distant. But just as he could give no advice to a friend, I could give no advice to him; nobody can ever give advice because you only get your one life and you never really figure it out. You can�t just choose the best option and sail into the sunset; the struggle will come to you and you can�t avoid it.

And it is a struggle, it�s a struggle just like it is for everybody, just like it was for my parents and grandparents, because when the struggle isn�t in your strength it�s in your mind, and when it isn�t in your mind it�s in your spirit, and only then can you get closer to the depths of the self; spiritual pain hurts more than physical pain I am sure, but both are good because when you�ve struggled you learn, you get stronger, you just gotta keep grappling.

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