Do Not Fear the Bears

I am sitting and typing this while staring at the Golden Gate Bridge, birds chirping all around me, wind blowing through trees and bright blue waves moving the waters of this world to the best places they could be.

 

I have only been to Golden Gate Recreational Area once before.  It was November 29.  I had been on the road in America for exactly six months that day, having left my family’s home in Cambridge, New York on May 29^th.  I had finished the “road trip” aspect of the journey by Labor Day, but I continued my odd lifestyle by living in a tent in Sonoma County, California, for about ten weeks while I worked the wine harvest on a whim.  Well, it wasn’t really a whim, more like an unexpected opportunity, but I needed the money after knowingly yet still foolishly living beyond my means during the only time in my life where I would be able to drive and go wherever I wanted in the home of the brave and land of the free.  I’d camped in 19 wilderness areas/national parks, couch surfed with five strangers in cities I had never been to before, and camped or hiked with three pairs of strangers in places I had never been to before.  By the time I was finished with harvest it was mid-November and I was more than ready to get back indoors to a warm bed and a space of my own where no one could see me or disturb me.  Nobody ever did while I was in my tent, but one starts to realize just how valuable that psychological level of security can be once you live free for so long.  My next stop was downtown Oakland, where I spent a week house sitting for one of my previous couch surfing hosts.  Then I visited an old college friend up at UC-Davis before taking a quick road trip down to Los Angeles to see another college friend, and then ride up Highway 1.  It was after that last road adventure that I moved into my first room of my own in America in over three and a half years.  Then again, it was only a ten-day sublet on Noe Street in San Francisco.  Before the ten days were up I found a one month sublet beginning in December, but there was a three day gap in between moving dates.  Luckily I had a friend from New Zealand who lived with her husband down in San Jose, and they offered to put me up for two nights.  So I spent one night at the Green Tortoise hostel in downtown San Francisco, where I could see the Transamerica Pyramid Center from my dormitory window, and then walked back up to Noe Street where I had parked my packed car for free.  My hosts wouldn’t be ready until the evening, so I had an afternoon to spend doing something worthwhile.  It was then that I decided to finally check out Golden Gate Recreational Area.  Unfortunately it was a cloudy, cold and windy day, so I wasn’t as amazed as I had hoped.

Later that night I visited my friend Jamie down in San Jose.  There was poetic significance to this reunion.  I met Jamie my first night in New Zealand, which was my first big journey of my life.  At the end of my first week she and two other Americans invited me on a trip to Lake Wanaka, a place I later learned had been visited by my grandparents.  We went hiking into a valley surrounded by glaciers, and spent the night in a hut about four miles in.  I had never actually “camped” overnight before, even though we were staying in a hut with electricity and facilities.  Then again, I didn’t own a sleeping bag yet, and arrogantly had only come equipped with a beach towel, so I pretty much froze that night.  The next day we returned to Lake Wanaka and played the game “Risk: The Game of World Domination.”  I didn’t and still don’t have any intention of conquering the world, but there’s something symbolic there that seems poetic now, given all of the travels that commenced.  Jamie stuck around a few more weeks after that, since she was a summer student, whereas I had just arrived for fall semester.  I hadn’t seen her since.  Now she worked for Google with her husband and lived in the same kind of one-story suburban home I had grown up in on Long Island.  They took me to eat at the Google cafeteria, another strange parallel, since I had eaten at the New York Google headquarters my first week back in New York returning from Japan, about a month before I began my American road trip.  I spent that night and most of the next day writing about my mind set in New York before I left on my journeys, and why I chose India as the starting line.  I remember thinking it was good writing, but then leaving it alone for a while, only reading it every so often.

A few weeks later I would unwittingly begin writing the first draft of a novel that begins in India, but I set it aside for a while because of world events.  You see, the novel ended with me teaching kindergartners in Japan, and feeling that by surviving all those journeys, I had done my best to conquer fear in my own way.  Right after I finished the last line I checked the news and saw that some guy who was disconnected from the world had decided to express himself by taking a bunch of elementary students out of it.  The tragedy and its timing screwed up my head, so I put the novel away.  Until today.

Now I’ve forgiven myself for the coincidence.  No matter what mysterious ways the universe uses to work out its destiny, all I can do and be is what’s inside of me and around me.  I had nothing to do with that killing spree, regardless of the mystery of psychic synchronicity.  I had nothing but positive thoughts flowing from me.

Even though I have my faults, and would never be so bold as to point my finger at the evil of the world and claim holier than thou, I still do my best to work against it through my actions, or at least avoid it as best I can through my actions.  I'd like to think that through my journeys I have done my best at this test to represent the opposite of that poor deranged boy who had spent his life unable to find a way to joyously connect with those around him.  When I felt disconnected from the world, I decided to go on a journey as opposed to seeking out violent ways to protect myself from those I perceived as enemies.  Not that it’s fair to set myself side to side with such a criminal.  Our lives are too complex to simplify with such generalizations.  Still, whenever something like that happens, I ask myself what I’m doing right and what I’m not.  Whenever I feel angry or need release, I take a walk, experience orgasmic pleasure, or listen to a song, and then I don’t feel like being aggressive toward anyone. 

If you want a gun to have fun, or to hunt because that's how your joy is won, I don't want to take that from anyone.  My dad and my grandfather are part of that group.  If you feel like you need one to protect yourself from the universal one, then that is your choice.  As for me, I choose to use my voice.