Thursday, May 13, 2010

The Business of Being Alive

 My expectations are fairly low regarding the mountains of the east and Smokey Mountain National Park did little to raise them. It's still early in the high country, not many leaves or flowers and the pinnacle of a few thousand feet the views were brown. Not horrible, it's hard to imagine being out in the woods and it being horrible ever.  Every place, like nearly every human, has something to appreciate. Something wise to bestow on the person who sits for a short minute of contemplation at its heart.

Dry Falls

On down to Transylvania County.  That's the place to go. Waterfalls that sent sound waves to beat your backbone, roar down gaps in sheer mossy cliffs. Forests that pulled in the mist like a breathy hint of lace and little towns with sweaty, bearded men driving trucks piled with rakes and shoves as well as alabaster skinned men in button down shirts, Italian leather and cars. I saw few women.


Out the Window

Little restaurants could be found, covered in ivy, surrounded by green ponds, lit by candle and owned by people who came looking to run away from the life they had built for themselves and never went back. Gregarious entrepreneurs with more life experience than most have in 100 years and a penchant for kissing the women that visit their place.


Horacio's

Antique shops with brand new merchandise shyly beckon  from nearly every stomach lurching corner. I started to count and then gave up wondering how many people it took to keep these havens of commerce thriving in a place that looks like you leave on vacation and come back to find your shop entombed with vines, centipedes and trees.

Unlike the arid peaks of the west the rain forest of the east crawls and hums with six, eight or hundred legged life all going somewhere and eating something.  On the way back from a warm shower with a tiny button in the wall that you pumped ferociously to get 3 minutes of pressure, I found a centipede with a fringe of tiny yellow legs. These legs moved in a sinusoidal pattern from back to front. All the legs bunched together in one spot as it tickled along the ground and this bunched up spot flowed up its body in a perfect sin wave pattern.  Beautiful in a squirmy sort of way. 

I found direction there.  Purpose for the summer anyway. Another summer of no money. A summer of rice, beans, Ramen Noodles and dreams.  But dreams to chase that I'll never get to chase for years if I don't do it now.  Someday I need to get a real job. Something that will take my soul from 9-5 and give me a decent living in return, but it appears that won't be this summer. I have settled on trying to sell at least three of my stories and perhaps write more to send out.

Lower priority but still a priority is to put my name out to do portrait photography and see what comes to me. Why not? Like the Italian in the little ivy covered restaurant pointed out. You try and if you fail you get down, do two push ups and move on.  I like that. It's true. I have to try.  I may fail but I'll never know if I don't hurtle myself down mountainside taking the challenges as they came.  I prefer landscape/nature photography but why not try, I have the skill and a good camera and I can always stop when I tire of it.

At the top of a mountain one can prepare, mitigate risk, visualize success and enjoy the view but life isn't lived at the top. It's lived either climbing up or hurtling down.  If I try to stay at the top it loses it's ecstasy. The view is made sweeter by the sweat, the agony and the sensuous experience of being physically and mentally engaged in the business of being alive.

- To Shel...