change of plans
i believe i had mentioned in a previous post: an offer i had received to go to london for work. an offer i gladly accepted. i received confirmation of the purchased plane ticket, arranged to be absent from school, packed my bags, and awoke this morning to get a call from my agent (on the day i was supposed to leave, no less) that the entire trip had been cancelled... due to what? lack of funds? a catastrophe? im still not entirely sure.

it was disappointing news, sure. even more so because the work i was promised now has to be made up in other ventures, and the professors i had talked at length with about my trip in order to rearrange my acadmic schedule will now see me in class tomorrow, and ask, "why are you here?" to which i will just throw up my hands.

the thought crossed my mind to just drive somewhere, anywhere... just leave and create a vacation of my own. but logic and inevitable financial distress got in the way and i wandered back into my comfortably small studio to do a page of some German homework, spend thirty minutes on a cheap version of the stairmaster i purchased from Target nearly two years ago, and then crawl into bed. i stayed under the covers for quite some time, allowing my thoughts to travel towards the negative... not about the cancelled trip in particular, but of fleeting life experiences and how much of them lie in the hands of others. i started to have some mild panic attack associated with the thought process: what have i been doing, what am i doing, and is it worth it in regards to what i really want out of life? am i studying within a fabricated environment to be able to, professionally, create fabricated environments for the rest of my years on earth? and what does that mean for my experience? has it been entirely artificial? and compared to what?

i suppose i also started to feel lonely, and it may have had something to do with the songs my Itunes had landed on, an hour or more worth of melodies in the minor key, a soundtrack of sorrow while i stared between my pillow and the far, white wall. but i began to think that it may also be that i finally stopped moving. i had undergone what is normally associated with emotional stress and heartache little more than a month ago, though i have hardly spent much time or energy dwelling on it. and its been due to the fact that, all this time, there has been something dire, or at least immediate, requiring my attention at near every moment. until now. because i had planned for something else requiring my attention and action, and it didn't happen. which left a gap of time i had not accounted for.

mind you, ive not fallen apart. but im still sitting in my apartment as if im waiting for a phone call or knock at the door. an old friend, or at least a familiar face, to show up and talk to me, touch my arm or face, and fill up the empty space beside my bed.

i feel tired and restless and in need of... something. the feeling is so familiar, though not in recent years.

i imagine myself back in the mountains of my hometown or the mountains where my ancestors lived and tell me of through remnants of memories in my blood. i need to be back in contact with something primal, physical, and that links me with other... men? is it men in particular? the last time i truly cried was when reading a passage from a book called Iron John. i dont remember where the exact passage lay but the message, something about the contemporary "soft man," ecologically superior to his father, sympathetic to the whole harmony of the universe, yet he himself has little vitality to offer. "He had learned so well not to hurt anyone that he couln't lift the steel, even to catch the light of the sun on it. But showing a sword doesn't necessarily mean fighting. It can also suggest a joyful decisiveness." theres something i need to rediscover about ritual from the past. not my past. but something much earlier. the passage that not only makes one a man, but brings him into the community of men.