6/24/2020 — Concord, Massachusetts
It’s hard to unspool the story of a journey when you don’t know where you’re going or how long it’ll take or if there’s enough gas to last until the next station. Are you still on the cusp? Is it just one more turn around the bend until you’re finally home and will laugh about all this? Are you somewhere deep in the middle state of not knowing, yet still going?
Sure, let’s say that. It’s liminal. It’s down the road, feeling bad. It’s a path and you’re on it. You are upright. It is one foot and then the next, you are moving but it’s slow, almost imperceptible. We are Brancusi’s Bird in Space. The sculpture looks immobile and unfeeling — but if you tilt your head the right way, if you give it time, you’ll see. It’s well named. Find the right perspective, tap into the right sensitivity: you’re soaring.
It was my 47th birthday last week so forgive the long preamble; you’ll see it ends somewhere fresh.
Pull the lens way back, high above New England, for the fullest picture of this small story of self. It starts nearly a half century ago, twenty miles from where I write this, in the Newton suburbs of Boston. Now rack focus to blur past 25 years of childhood and adolescence and an early adulthood delayed of responsibility, and laden with privilege, by college and grad school.
Hover the lens over Manhattan. Zip through twenty two years of wage-earning, bar-hopping, schul-going adulthood. I did well in that slim island two miles wide by twelve miles tall. Paid my way. Lived in a beautiful apartment. Forged one big love with plenty of heat yet poor welding. The accumulating load of insecurity and fear and bad timing proved too heavy for the joints. The structure between us snapped, leaving angry edges. Big EMO sigh.
I made friends and nurtured community. But for too long I was too alone. I never knew how to reforge those broken seams. Tried a few times but the bonds always broke.
The victories of New York are all mine, as are the failures.
Now swing the camera to March 2020. Pick up the pace with a fast tracking shot. I hustle down West Street with luggage, jump in my car and screech out of town. Fast forward a few weeks then pause on a late night of lockdown in rural Massachusetts. I lay alone on a lumpy bed in a barn, sensing the terror that darkness brings. Cut to: an empty, bright day. There’s nothing to do but gape at the world. You see everything. You understand nothing.
Now let’s float the camera. Time elongates and smooths into summer. You climb a metaphoric mountain towards normalcy, grabbing onto burgers at an outdoor restaurant as a foothold, reaching out to a birthday dinner with parents and siblings for a ledge to rest. You make your way slowly now, at any minute it’s a fall to your death, but you’re heading upwards. For now.
This slow journey into the unknown makes me think of the Pilgrims. Even if you’ve been home this whole time, staring at the same furniture, hearing the same silence, listening to the same small children’s demands, the same teenagers’ quips, we’re on the same journey — just different ships. We’re all rocking up and down dark waters to the unknown.
A pilgrim is not a conqueror out for gain. A pilgrim is forced to leave comfort to find solace.
Our Pilgrims left cruelty to build something new. To the Wampanoags, of course, the difference between a pilgrim or colonizer is semantic. Genocide soon followed. But from the Pilgrims’ perspective, at least, they weren’t on Hajj as a spiritual commandment. They weren’t offering Passover sacrifices in Jerusalem only to head back home again. They didn’t walk from France to Spain on El Camino de Santiago. It wasn’t a circular trip. They sailed from home to go somewhere new and frightening. They fled across the ocean like it was a dark, watery inverse of the Israelites’ flight across hard desert.
The Pilgrims set up our experience for now. We are all heading to the shores of a distant Massachusetts. We’re not there yet.
Here is one leg of one pilgrim’s journey.
Last Thursday morning. Good a day as any. Put the car in reverse, ease down the driveway careful not to hit the telephone pole. Crank the wheel right. Ease off the clutch.
This time my destination wasn’t Vermont but the Pioneer Valley, a hundred miles to the west, where the Connecticut River carves through central Massachusetts. On either side of its banks sprawl 19th century mill towns that once churned out textiles in sweating, agonizing labor. Now they confer degrees from the five colleges. I wanted to see the land. I heard it was progressive; with artists, academics, farmers and Jewish community. If we live in tribes then these are mine. Might be a place to live.
News flash: touring college towns is a terrible idea in June 2020. It was over ninety degrees: too hot to be outdoors in the wet oven of summer in New England, and with Phase Whatever, too shutdown to be inside. I bought lunch at an Easthampton café. The waitress had me stand on the sidewalk and press my credit card to the storefront glass so she could type the numbers into her tablet. Minutes later, she reached over the tables that blocked the front door to hand me a sandwich, and perhaps a smile. It’s hard to tell with masks.
I ate my gourmet grilled cheese by the shore of a pond, alone, used to being alone. Then I noticed an egret hunting its lunch across the water. Also alone.
I made my way across a sweltering parking lot to buy craft beer from another masked woman, just to do something, then drove to Amherst to enjoy a family friend’s patio and make small talk. The couple, a successful YA author and her husband, chatted and savored memories of Brooklyn. They made me laugh. They gave me iced tea. They were the first people I had spoken to that day. It was 4pm.
Soon I ambled southwest to a small Airbnb in-law apartment. (If you have questions about Airbnb in-law apartments, just ask. I’m now an expert.) In the morning there was no tasks to perform, no one to talk to, no places to visit. I pointed the Sapphire Dragon southwest to touch, but not really, New York City. It’s become a monthly pilgrimage of its own — to connect with my brother and a few friends for a few hours.
Soon I retreated to Concord, 60 miles away from the Pilgrims’ Plymouth Rock. The foundation on the shore is close, yet still unseen. Still untouched. And, for however long now lasts, only for our dreams and whispers.
Coda
Later, my friend Hilary recommended I listen to Steve Earle’s Pilgrim, from his 1999 album The Mountain. It expresses being a one way pilgrim perfectly.
I am just a pilgrim on this road, boys
This ain’t never been my home
Sometimes the road was rocky long the way, boys
But I was never travelin’ alone
We’ll meet again on some bright highway
Songs to sing and tales to tell
But I am just a pilgrim on this road, boys
Until I see you fare thee well
Ain’t no need to cry for me, boys
Somewhere down the road you’ll understand
Cause I expect to touch his hand, boys
Put a word in for you if I can