Eating left over spaghetti and thinking about anarchy....

"Thus we squander countless hours watching television or balancing checkbooks -- hours that, in retrospect we might have done better to have spent walking on the seashore with our loved ones, cooking gourmet means for our children or friends, writing fiction or hitchhiking across South America. The reality of our future death is not easy for any of us to come to terms with, but it is surely better that we consider this now than regret not doing so when it is too late."*

This quote from a book I happened about reminds me of just how much I don't do. And I don't mean what I left undone that "should" be done.

I'm making a conscious effort to do things just because I want to do them. It's tough, though, because everything in our freaking culture cries out against doing things "just because." At any given moment, I can give you a list of 50 things I should be doing. Right now, there's laundry to be folded, I could be making lunch for my kids (instead of inviting them to do the "left over juggle" and find their own lunch), I could be editing a book I said I would for a friend, or watching another mindless episode of some fabricated reality on television that takes me away from the overwhelming "shoulds" in my life -- if only for 30 minutes. I could be cleaning, exercising, I haven't showered yet today, there are books to organize for a sale ... the list is endless.

But I'm blogging, because that's what I want to do.

I'm constantly caught between the expectations of what others have on me, what I "consciously" place on myself, and the deep yearnings of my heart that know there is something more. I'm not talking spiritually. I'm talking about my day to day life. I emailed a friend this morning, and told him, "I'll probably just end up dying, because I cannot reconcile what I know is right in my heart and what I "know" (in light of societal expectations) I need to do and be."

Yeah, yeah. I know we're all here at one moment or another. But if you seriously start considering how much of our life is "have to..." Even the serendipitous things we often claim as things we "want" to do fall under the category of acceptable social expectations.

If I were to leave my family for a month and wander around the northwest with a friend ... if I were to go on a two week vacation to Cuba to find a fine cigar ... if I decided that every time I go out to eat, I'd invite someone who was homeless to dine with me ... if I wanted to stay out at bars and clubs hearing bands and recording the stories of these musicians in plain clothes ... my husband would freak, my friends would think I was crazy, and my children would feel abandoned. Society would label me a sociopath or schizophrenic, and my "church" would pray for my very soul.

And all this ... passion? Desire? My husband would mistake it for lack of love for him. My children would mistake it for "something they did wrong." My community would call me selfish and a whore and just plain nuts because no one "lives" that way.

And I would argue that very few people live at all.

There's this guy I know who pretty much lives his life this way. He's not married - no kids to support - so he's not constrained by some of the things I am. But he goes and come like a spring rain -- no warning, no reasons but his own. His family thinks he's a little nuts. They are waiting for him to "settle down" and become a "respectable" person, bound and chained by the very things we are taught are normal and desirable.

Me? I hope he never stops. I hope he finds someone to love who will wander with him, or stay at home with little expectation of "what's in it for them." I hope no one and nothing ever fetters Nate's heart, because in him I see so much of what my own heart cries out to do. I live vicariously through his adventures, even the cold, dark, lonely nights he finds himself among. He gives me hope that what is "normal" is only so because we have given it some type of authority in our lives. He reaffirms my belief that the way "civilization" is organized is successful only to reach certain arbitrary levels of complacency and comfort.

That we only live in moments. And those moments are very few and far between.

"Yes, I've had my moments -- but I would have liked for my life to have been nothing but moments, one after another...."*

*Quotes are from Days of War/Nights of Love: Crimethink for Beginners, 2001