The Long Road Home

My last shift at ABC was largely uneventful. The night before, my dear co-workers had arranged an ad-hoc sending off for me involving several games of Apples to Apples, copious amounts of beer and a bonfire. I really struck gold when I found ABC and the warmth of my going-away social after only having worked there a couple short months illustrated that perfectly.

It was already well after 8:00 p.m. when Dad arrived to bring me to Columbus. Add the time it took to load up his van and subsequently stop for a bite to eat and it was closer to 10:00 by the time we left Ann Arbor. There is something about driving late at night on evenings of great consequence that puts me in a somber, reflective mood that seems to create moments that etch themselves indelibly on my memory. Dad and I talked of many things on that journey to the city I'd left just over two years before, of religion and politics, of family and friends, of sports and leisure and memories shared, hopes, dreams, future, past and present. Out of all that conversation I remember one line particularly. We had been discussing what part of Columbus I was moving to, which just happened to be a scant few blocks away from where I had lived when I was 20 just after my freshman year at Ohio State. A brief, contemplative silence followed, and finally Dad said:

“You really took the long road home, didn't you?”

It will be hard for the reader to immediately grasp the cacophony of emotions that little sentence aroused in me. Out loud I laughed, but inside was a turmoil of frustration, relief, happiness and loss. “Home” is a place of a million million memories. Friends, family and little sacred places occupy their fair share of those memories, but many others are not so nostalgic. There are the memories of feeling trapped in my home town as a teenager, wanting nothing more than to see the world; memories of feeling lost and without hope as I dropped out of Ohio State, no freedom in sight and a mountain of debt crushing down ever more heavily on my shoulders; memories of long, lonesome midnight walks where I would imagine myself never turning back, just disappearing into the distance.

I was returning to my friends and family, yes, and no adventure out in the great wide world will ever mean quite as much to me as my parents, sisters and old friends. But I was also returning only because of lost dreams – the dream of law school and the dream of teaching in Korea. I was going from the freedom of the outside world where the sky was the limit and no wish seemed unattainable to the place where years ago I had felt like I might never escape either the physical confines of my home or the metaphorical grasp of debt and powerlessness.

Nearly two months have gone by since Dad said those words, but I have thought of them often since. The mixture of feelings they first elicited continues to this day. For the first time in years I have two things I have not had in a long, long time: regular visits with old friends and family, as well as the freedom that comes from not working and going to class simultaneously. It is hard for me to say just how much joy I have derived from both these things. I have read quite a few books, written distant friends, started writing several stories, practiced guitar almost every day, made new friends and enjoyed a number of great impromptu conversations with my duplex neighbors who share our porch. All these things feed my soul and in a way I feel more nourished in these past two months than I had for years before.

Yet, at the same time I have experienced the frustration of holding a 40-hour/week job that has nothing to do with my dreams and I face the prospect of paying off debts. Moreover, I have found that the responsibilities of adult life prevent many of my friends, who are not as free as I am, from socializing and conversing as often as I'd like. I am, then, largely happy and much of my time is filled with rewarding pursuits that give me a deep, abiding satisfaction, but at the same time I am not cut out to live this life forever. Living in Ohio, sacrificing half my waking life to a job whose best quality is that it is not miserable is not my idea of happiness. I am a Dreamer, and Dreamers cannot be content without following their dreams.

I am also a Wanderer, and Wanderers cannot be content. Now, you may have expected that sentence to end with the clause “without wandering,” but the nature of the Wanderer itself is paradoxical. Wanderers have to wander or they'll be frustrated and stifled by the stationary life, which does not satisfy them in the slightest. However, the activity of wandering is a transient, difficult lifestyle filled with temporary connections to people soon left behind and a complete lack of anything that can truly be called “home.” Such a lifestyle is largely antithetical to contentment. So it seems that, stay or go, the Wanderer is doomed to a life of discontent.

The English language is a muddled contraption of synonyms, homonyms, antonyms and whatever other kinds of nyms you can think of. Words like “content” are used to describe any one of a vast array of feelings, ranging from eating homemade ice cream surrounded by friends and family on the 4^th of July without a care in the world to being perfectly happy to live in Alexandria, MN for the rest of one's life. The 4^th of July kind of contentment is the feeling that all is right in the world at that moment, while the resolution of living out one's days in Alexandria indicates that one is all right with one's current life and has no particular desire to change it any time soon. Both are feelings of contentment.

For the Wanderer, the latter feeling – staying in one place for the rest of one's days – is utterly foreign. The Wanderer, who could just as rightly be called the Explorer, feels the constant compulsion to do something new: to learn a new language, pick up a new instrument, read a new book, see a new place, experience something beyond everyday life. However, the 4^th of July kind of contentment – the feeling that all is right in the universe – is just as possible for the Wanderer as it is for the 76 year-old man who has lived in Alexandria his whole life and who currently occupies a bench at an idyllic park eating a decadent, towering waffle cone of cookie dough ice cream surrounded by his flawless, successful family with the sun beaming graciously down on him like the smile of God himself.

The contentment I seek is not the contentment of a steady place and setting, but rather the contentment of the soul. It is a contentment to which there are many roads, no two of which are the same for any two individuals, and it does not require one to settle down in one place for all time. Thank God. I would argue it is by far the more important of the two kinds of contentment. Anyway, I've just argued it's the only kind available to me, so I'll take what I can get.

Which leads to the obvious question: Whither leads Dave's next path, if he is so stubbornly determined to ship off around the world and so obstinately and long-windedly convinced he cannot be happy without “wandering” or “exploring” or whatever he wants to call it?

Well, we shall see, shan't we?

The Circle of Life

"I can't promise I'll try, but I'll try to try."
-Bart Simpson

It's been a long bloody time since I wrote a blog update. So long that unlike True American Hero Homer Simpson I won't even try to try to relate everything that's happened the past couple months.

My mind is a funny thing when it comes to writing. I'm convinced it secretly wants me never to write again, because it keeps seizing on the first excuse, be it ever so unconvincing, it can find for me not to do it. Take this blog, for example. For the past several months I kept on telling myself it wouldn't be interesting if I didn't have a lot of pictures with it. I kept on determining I would take the requisite pictures, then (1) not taking pictures and (2) recycling my justification for not writing. I had to fight the same battle this very night, yet here as I sit editing my post, lo and behold!, I've discovered a number of pictures that fit perfectly.

Which leaves me with a bit of a dilemma. If my mind is truly conspiring against me, how do I win? I mean, the very mechanism I would usually use to see through trickery and deceit is the thing that's tricking and deceiving me. But I think maybe I've figured it out now. The trick is probably just not to think in the first place. I'll get right on that.

At this exact moment I happen to be sitting at a table scattered with the countless little belongings that tend naturally to accumulate on free surfaces in a busy household. This charmingly cluttered little table is situated in an equally charming room. Oriental rugs, darkwood furnishings and paintings complement each other perfectly, making a comfortable, homey ambiance. But my favorite part of the decorations has to be the dozens -- maybe even hundreds -- of Christmas ornaments strung up around the French doors and fireplace in this endearing living room. Being rather fond of Christmas lights as year-round interior decorations myself, you can imagine my pleasure at living in a place that makes my little bedroom illuminations seem trivial by comparison.

Where am I, you ask? Why, only at the home of a gentleman named James F., who much to my delight responded incisively to my Craig's List advertisement for temporary lodging. My sublease ran out on the 20th, you see, which was rather inconvenient considering the lease on my next place begins September 1st. I was left with roughly two weeks without a place to sleep and few prospects apart from a couple dubious-looking park benches on Main St. Yet another crisis in lodging had presented itself, and once again it was Craig's List to the rescue.

And rescue it did. I truly couldn't have found a better place. James has been an absolutely splendid host, indescribably hospitable and excellent in conversation, to boot. He even provided me with encouragement to start blogging again. Quite a good deal for a hastily-found Craig's List host, though I have to admit I'm a bit apprehensive at all my good luck. This makes two straight too-good-to-be-true living situations garnered from Craig's List and I'm beginning to wonder if I've used up all my Craig's List luck. I hope not, because my future roommates, Sam and Allie, seem really cool, and old Craig helped me find them too...

I should probably give some sort of an update on my life as a whole since that was the intent of this blog in the first place. For the past few months I've been working at ABC -- Arbor Brewing Company. This is the entrance. Or at least a picture of it:


And this is what it looks like on the inside:


Melissa doesn't work there anymore, though. She moved to North Carolina and is decidedly missed.

ABC is a truly unique place. Endearingly known as "The Pub" by those who work there, it is a haven of beer afficionados (known to the rest of the world as "beer snobs), long-serving regulars (some might say alcoholics, or at least beeraholics) and a surprising number of long-term employees (termed in the service world as "lifers"). Also, it has amazing beer. Outstanding beer. Beer so wonderful it brings a tear to the eye. And the people are swell. Terrific. Inspired. I don't know how the people that run ABC managed to attract all the coolest people within 20 miles to work in one place, but they did. And I will miss every one of them more than I can say.

But all things come to an end, eventually, and as good a time as I've had at ABC I have, for a number of reasons that will become clearer farther along in this entry, decided to move back to Ohio for a year. For now, though, I shall reflect a bit on Ann Arbor, as life here has treated me as well as I could ask.

I really have had a fantastic time here. Most satisfying (much to no-one's surprise) have been the relationships I've formed. There has been Kevin J., my roommate for most of the summer, with whom I enjoyed a number of chess matches followed by afternoon conversations about life while we sat on our front porch and watched the world slowly grow older. I've also found a kindred spirit in Chris L., who shares my passion for sports in general as well as my laid-back approach to enjoying life. I will sorely miss afternoons hitting a tennis ball, kicking a soccer ball, or tossing the frisbee on the Law Quad. And of course I will miss my beloved S.S. and ABC crew. Visits will be forthcoming, guaranteed.

Two of the best "weekends" (meaning, in this case, consecutive days off work, not necessarily Friday night through Sunday evening) of the summer, however, involved none other than my two dear sisters.

The first of these was with Liza, my younger sister who, I am exceedingly pleased to report, successfully passed the state examination and is about to commence a career in massage therapy. I am absolutely beaming with pride, so much you'd think it was me who got his license. My dear younger sister came up to AA and we had an absolutely smashing time involving a trip to the Farmer's Market, the purchase of a growler of fine beer from ABC, the construction of some delectable guacamole and vegan burritos, and a viewing of the rather mediocre film Death to Smoochy, which was made considerably more tolerable by the consumption of said growler and the fine company.

Beer and Beer Vessels


Beloved sister and also-beloved brother-in-law

Suffice it to say, I did not at all want to say goodbye. When you have such a wonderful little sister, one-day visits every once in a while are simply not enough.

Still, the weeks went by and eventually I was fortunate enough to be graced with a visit from my elder sister. We came up with the half-crazed idea of hiking 17.1 miles at Pinckney State Park, about 30 miles west of Ann Arbor. After fumbling about trying to get started for what seemed like hours, Carey and I found ourselves on a trail that wound off into the distance. We set off armed with nothing but our wits, 50-pound backpacks, some vegan-friendly fare and two indomitable wills. To say it was gorgeous would be to say Caravaggio was passable at painting.

View from a bridge on the path

View from our campground in the morning (that's a lake in the background)

Self-explanatory. But note the Man Beard.

These two visits from my sisters reminded me just how much I missed them. Out on the trail at Pinckney, Carey and I walked in silence for a couple hours at one point. There is something about being away from it all, isolated in nature without the normal distractions of urban life (which I love equally, in a different way) that makes you see things in another light. When you're surrounded by the sounds of running water, whispering wind and babbling animals, sometimes it makes you understand the longings of your heart a little more clearly. During those silent hours on the trail with Carey, it suddenly hit me that it had been two years -- two years! -- since I'd seen my sisters on anything resembling a regular basis. It dawned on me that because of my delayed law school plans I had an opportunity that might not present itself in the future: the opportunity to finally be close to them again.

There, in that place, following so quickly on the heels of my enchanting visit with Liza, it was crystal-clear that I needed to return home for a while. Perhaps, I thought, I can learn just as much from a return to the familiar-but-forgotten as I could from the adventurous-and-unknown. This thought was especially true, I think, since my life had been turned upside-down in the past half year. Though my natural instinct is always to keep going, I have to remember that everyone needs to rest, if only for a little while. I think now is that time for me.

Worth a million words, this one.

So, it's off to Columbus with me, with the intention of bothering my family until they get sick of me, paying off loans and saving up money for a ticket overseas. Just because I'm going home doesn't mean I'm not still a wandering soul.

The road goes ever on and on...

The S.S.

Every night before I crawl into "bed," this is what I see:

Innocent-seeming bed.

It doesn't look very threatening, does it? Perhaps a bit lower than a normal bed, but what's six inches between friends? (And that is NOT what she said.)

My otherwise-gracious and honest subletter over the summer let me know every pertinent fact about the room I moved into. She sent me pictures, described the funishings, and is even paying over half the rent. It would seem omitting the fact the bed was six inches too short was a small thing and easily overlooked. Or so I thought when I first moved in. Yet, six inches, as it turns out, is the difference between a bed with an actual mattress and a quasi-bed that consists solely of a box spring on a frame. That may not seem like a big difference to you; at first it didn't to me, either. As it turns out, however, those six inches are the difference between a lot of things. They are the difference between:

-A night of peaceful slumber and a night of muttered expletives.
-A morning of eager hope for the new day and a morning of muttered expletives.
-Holding your mug with hands full of cool confidence in the morning and dropping your mug because you scarcely slept for the past three weeks, and then shouting expletives.
-Paying for at least two cups of coffee a day instead of just one because your sleep intake has been effectively halved and replaced by an ever-increasing number of muttered (and shouted) expletives.
-Waking up with bruises in all sorts of interesting and normally-ignored places as opposed to healing, which is apparently what the body is supposed to do during sleep. I wouldn't know, though. It's been far too long for me.

What lies beneath.

Enough about my nemesis. There are other important things to discuss.

Long ago, when I was still referring to myself in the third person, I alluded to a mysterious group of people found wandering around State and Monroe on weekdays and significantly less reputable places on weekends. I have affectionately named this group "The S.S." for reasons that will become apparent in the near future. Allow me to explain.

The S.S. are an amalgamation of approximately 90 individuals whose lifestyles, while exhibiting some variety in scale, are eerily similar. Half get up before 8 a.m. and the rest are up by 10 at the very latest. They seem to have a strange affinity for gothic architecture and long, painstaking hours perusing incomprehensible books. To the outsider, this behavior is horribly perplexing, especially since few of them seem to actually enjoy the books they read and many of them complain volubly and at length about how much frustration they derive from them.

An odd and disconcerting fear palpitates through the S.S. Rumours have flown in secretive whispers about one or more "gunners" that may have infiltrated the group. The neutral observer would perhaps be alarmed by such frequent mentions of potential violence, but the S.S. seem to be an uncommonly bold crowd. More often than not the supposed “gunner” is discussed with disdain, mild humour or sarcasm; seldom, if ever, is he or she taken seriously. One wonders if the S.S.’s casual treatment of this marginalized member of society might perpetuate the very behavior the S.S. seem so universally to scorn. One equally wonders if this individual even exists outside the collective paranoia that pervades the S.S. It seems only time will tell, but I join every human with a shred of compassion in praying this “gunner” is a figment of their collective imagination and, barring that, that at least he/she finds salvation before doing something drastic.

Rumours aside, the S.S. are an agreeable bunch. Although they try to seem as normal as possible most of the time, little things give them away — conversational use of “the law of diminishing marginal returns,” reproachful references to “undergrads,” and the occasional citation of Friedrich Engels, to name a few. They are an educated lot, but largely unpretentious. I have befriended a number of them. Allow me to introduce a few.

No doubt you recognize the fellow on the left, so I shan't bother introducing him. Proceeding left-to-right after him, then, are Colin, Lauren and Chris, all members of the S.S. They are all wonderful individuals and I am reasonably confident none of them is the feared "gunner" who has psychologically terrorized Ann Arbor for the past month.

Over the course of my interactions with these S.S. members, I have come to understand who they are and what they are about. "S.S." stands for "Summer Starters" at Michigan Law School. From them I learned that the term "gunner" carries with it a completely different connotation in legal education than in the rest of the world. In law school, gunners are students "gunning" for the top spot in the class via any means necessary -- honest, dishonest, onerous or irritating, and often all at the same time. At first, I was relieved to hear my fears of physical violence were unfounded, but on further reflection I became as fearful of the gunner as the S.S. were. Here were a group of people heading into an occupation not particularly noted for its moral qualities, yet there existed an individual disagreeable enough to strike terror into them, a group of future lawyers?! I found myself wondering if a gunner in the more traditional sense might not be less dangerous.

Concerns about the gunner aside, I so enjoyed the company of the S.S. that I became one, at least briefly. "Briefly?!?!" you ask in shock and dismay, nerves (naturally) hinging on my every word. "What do you mean 'briefly?' Come to think of it, I noticed on your facebook posts that you recently visited the public library and have designs on learning a new language. You're in law school, for Christ's sake; you can't possibly have the time to teach yourself a bloody language whilst keeping up in Contracts and Torts! What are you on about?"

The answer is coming, dear reader, but you must wait for the next post. This one is growing a bit out of control. My captivating prose, be it ever so enthralling, is still subject to the finite limits of the average adult attention span. Drop by next time for an inquiry on brevity, new languages, facebook, and how they all relate to the life of Jonathan David Whitsett III.