Fill Me Up

I have recently identified this feeling I’ve been having: a sort of emptiness. It may seem odd, but I’ve discovered that too much time with people, too much socializing, too much having fun to be quite frank – leads me to a feeling of emptiness. Drained. Wrung out. Sucked dry. Viscerally parched. It has caused me to lose sight of myself. I apparently require a lot of introspective solitude, and without it, I don’t even know who I am or where I am going.

I decided that I desperately needed to do something about it, so I dedicated this weekend to myself, and to making myself useful. I’ve been feeling the need to do something useful with myself and with my time. So Friday morning, the first day of school, I got up well before dawn to meet Nancy Hiss and help her draw names on a Portland sidewalk, something she has been doing for well over a year now. Nancy started her Iraq Names Project on Memorial Day of 2007, and has been at it ever since. She draws the names of those who have died in Iraq, in the chronological order of their peril. She is using her artistic skills as her vehicle to peacefully bring awareness to the astronomical number of deaths, and most importantly, to honor each individual and recognize that behind each death is a human being with a name. She has drawn over 4000 names and covered a continuous line of over 14 miles of Portland sidewalks. Once again, I am humbled by the dedication, devotion, and heart a person has put into a project that means something to her. And it made me feel just a little more useful to help.

After helping Nancy, I went straight to a full day of school (where she is my teacher!), and then straight to my family’s cabin in the woods, by myself. I had never been there by myself but it was the one place I could think of that would allow me to be away from people completely. And so I went…with the intention of having no communication with anyone for a couple days. I needed to shut out the noise in my head, because with quiet comes clarity. When I first arrived, I had to fully fight the urge to call someone, anyone. I wasn’t sure what the heck I was going to do – no internet, no tv (i.e. no distractions), no connectivity whatsoever, other than my trusty cell phone. Fortunately, I got over it. It was only the first night that was difficult; after that it was smooth sailing.

I took a solo bike ride around Crater Lake, something I try to do every year, but again, I’d never done it alone. When I arrived, I was disappointed to see some fires burning in the area, causing the lake to look all hazy and much less vivid than it typically is. Once again I found irony in the metaphor: I come here to seek clarity and clear the haze from my head and what do I find but more haze?! But of course…during my ride, the haze cleared – both in my head and around the lake. This ride gave me a run for my money – it’s pretty brutal; it is a constant shift between long, arduous climbs, and downhill screamers. It requires non-stop flipping between crawling up and bombing down (i.e. pain/suffering and adrenaline/elation). I thought I was going to die toward the end, but convinced myself it was only physical pain and I could handle it. I did end up speaking to a few people but they were strangers and the exchanges were brief, so I’m not counting this as cheating on my non-communication weekend! I was happy as hell to have finished, and to have just narrowly avoided the “FALLING ROCK” that I’ve seen all over the road and warned about on signage…but never actually seen falling until I literally barely escaped being hit with it! Talk about wake up call…I could have been maimed (or worse)!!

The remainder of my weekend was spent reading and doing homework, and I am happy to report that I feel full again…hydrated, rather than parched.