Friday, February 26, 2010

With glowing hearts (desplus brillants exploits).


"The person who doesn't make mistakes is unlikely to make anything."
- Paul Arden


(or)

"Every golden age is as much a matter of disregard as of felicity." - Michael Chabon


It's really only a mistake if you ask my malnourished bank account. If you ask a pragmatist. If you ask my impossibly nervous immediate family (who has no clue what I just did). It's really only a mistake if you want to play it safe. If you want to save up for a rainy day. If you put faith in the word "maybe." If you trust the word "hopefully." "Someday."

It's really only a mistake if you ignore the fact that not going is a far, far larger one.

I started my part-time job yesterday. The first day I have worked since July 2. The first time my income was not a lump sum from selling my car, or from Christmas presents, or a generous loan from a loved one. Wait... this is important, but not the beginning. This story starts earlier, kaleidoscopically.

The sportscaster/comedian Kenny Mayne spoke at the Barnes & Noble at the Grove a few years back and I listened as he talked about the certain sports events that you absolutely have to go to in your life. The Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby, the World Series, the Olympics. I had never actually considered that last one.

A few months later, as my friends and I played the extremely self-destructive game of pub golf for my birthday, every bar on Main Street in Santa Monica was airing the Opening Ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games. My friend Jeffrey surprised me by revealing that that was one of his lifelong bucket list dreams, to attend the Olympics. And the reason, from what my vodka-misted memory can recall, actually had little to do with sports or the events themselves. Rather the overall experience, the pageantry and spectacle of the world converging in one area for one massive celebration.

Sixteen months and 20,000 miles later I had insomnia. I was awake at 2 in the morning in my childhood house in Pennsylvania, an interminable two week visit to a village that was once home. And when I wasn't being lectured about disparaging the tea party movement or for not sitting at rapt attention during the homily at Christmas Eve mass, I was having withdrawals from the road. I missed the new experiences, the lifestyle, the camaraderie of backpackers. I missed what people far too often simply call feeling alive but really is the recognition and confidence of absolute sovereignty. At 2 a.m., I was still mulling over the invite I'd received a month earlier from another backpacker I had met in Jordan to visit Vancouver in February. A free place to stay and face value tickets to three Olympic events. I had no money, no job prospects, no clue even where I'd be living or how much rent I would be paying when I got to New York in two weeks. And then I realized what an idiot I was being. All the people in the world that would jump at such an opportunity, all the people that with starry eyes and meek voices say "Well, maybe... hopefully, someday" and I sat mulling it over. I leaped out of my bed and then had to wait a good ten minutes for my mother's ancient laptop to load to the point where I could send the email. One not much longer than "I'm coming. I'll figure out the details and logistics later, but I'll be there."

February 20th rolled around and, still no television job, only a part-time one that was being delayed by this trip and down to the vapors of my checking account, I boarded a plane to Vancouver.

For five months, I went to the world. I ran an absurdly large spectrum of cultures, people, cuisines, languages, customs, conversations, currencies, experiences. Memories. For the past five days, in Vancouver, I let the world come to me. A singer-songwriter belting out lyrics in French at the Maison du Quebec, telling an anecdote about his dreams of being a hockey player fizzling after one 22-0 peewee hockey loss in which he was the deluged losing goaltender- how his father played him a song to cheer him up and how his love of music grew from that. Tiny Russian toddlers clapping and spasmodically dancing outside of Vancouver's giant-disco-ball-looking Science World that served as the Sochi 2014 Pavilion, slapping together thundersticks printed in Cyrillic that they could barely hold in their growing hands. Germans rooting for America at a downtown sports bar called Malone's, even painting flags on their cheeks in support of the US against Canada in hockey, and then using the same palette of colors to paint Swedish flags on the faces of a family from Montana. Thousands of people simultaneously taking pictures of the striking Olympic Cauldron, unified in wonder of how beautiful something as basic as lights and fire could be. Watching part of the Slovakia/Norway game on a TV in the Hudson Bay Company's window, there was an incredibly violent hit where a Slovakian player was knocked unconscious, blood pooling from the back of his head after it slammed on the ice- a crowd of 15 or so assembled in silence and concern, finally broken by a man asking me in a trembling whisper what happened, and then translating in Czech to his friends what I was saying. Worry and fright that transcended languages, that was common ground. The city of Vancouver itself: stumbling upon a back alley in the Gastown district covered with some of the best street art I've seen outside of New York and Berlin- the alley was a government funded initiative for convicted graffitiers to create art more complex than simple tagging, the city allowing the street to be their canvas. I found this out from a homeless man who didn't ask for any money, just took joy in a stranger finding beauty and excitement in something he got to see everyday. Just relishing in the pride and opportunity to be a tour guide was enough for him. People I met for five seconds that I will remember the rest of my life.

The Olympics. It has so little to do with the actual events. In the same way Thailand had little to do with the famous temples, or Brussels with the Mannekin Pis, or New York with the Empire State Building, or LA, home, with the Hollywood Sign or Chinese Theatre.

Kenny Mayne was right for advising. Jeffrey Harris was right for wishing. And I was right for going.

The Golden Age doesn't happen in your living room. You walk outside your front door or take a plane to a new city and it meets you somewhere along the way.

Vancouver:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2117303&id=35804394&l=4e94846d6e