Oct. 2nd, Again…

It’s been difficult finding the motivation to write since I’ve been back in Ithaca. Most likely for reasons I could attribute to the weather, (see my previous post). Either autumn seems to have come much faster this year, or I have just been moving about continents too fast to adjust to anywhere. My mood continues to swing, from Stable to Low. There don’t seem to be many Highs in the works anytime soon. I’ve taken to writing only in public places. Ma’s house just doesn’t cut it. The Starbucks has been more than sufficient for my purpose.

Two years ago, the transition from summer to fall was smooth and easy. It remained hot and beautiful all through September, and made the gradual shift to a colorful autumn in October. Maybe it just felt that way because of the mood I was in. No doubt, I was riding very high at that time, one of those rare times when everything seemed to be my way. Even the setbacks (and there were a few) could be easily glossed over. They only served to fit into my larger plans and schemes, rather than to work against them.

It has just occurred to me, as I am writing this, the date today is October 2nd. In fact, it is quite significant to bring up the state of affairs of two years ago, as it was this exact date that held a great deal of meaning to me. I’d rather not elaborate on this just yet, as I am not quite comfortable in doing so. Perhaps on another day I will. But I can say for certain that it was quite blissful on that October 2nd. Things are much more uncertain today. As is the case on the weekend of this writing, the weekend of October 2nd two years fell on the annual Apple Cider Festival. I’ve grown to truly love this festival. One can truly appreciate the sleepy magical feeling that symbolizes the Ithaca Commons on an autumn weekend, at the Apple Cider Festival. (This is not the festival’s actual title, but I prefer it my way). Apparently, whoever is in charge of the music playing on the overhead PA here at Starbucks agrees with me. The two songs playing successively are Everyday, sung by the late great Buddy Holly, and Across the Universe, unfortunately sung by someone other than the Beatles. To me, nothing ever says “sleepy” and “magical” like Buddy Holly—particularly, Everyday.


Dateline: Six days ago—I’m on the bus coming back to Ithaca from New York City, where I landed three days earlier from a flight leaving Amsterdam. I’m jotting down as many thoughts in my notebook that race through my mind as we are cruising across I-80.

9/26/10, Political thought of the Day:
The reality of the Obama Administration’s policies: Obama has done what no Democrat before him has been willing to do—he has pursued a school-reform agenda that directly challenges the power and influence the teachers’ unions have had on the Democratic Party. Yet comment after comment I see posted by Yahoo Users continue to perpetuate this canard that the administration’s policies are kowtowing to the unions!

It is as I have said before. We cannot expect that the forces of reason and logic can ever truly triumph over that of bias and prejudice. Not in this political lifetime.

So many goddamn competing interests making bringing about real change so complicated. Anyone who says that Healthcare Reform is the Holy Grail of politics is mistaken. It is in effecting Education Reform that is finding the true Holy Grail—just an opinion. All the conflict there is internecine.

The day’s political commentary now behind me, I turn my focus to a more tract…

If one day, should my experiences as a young man become subject to examination by historians and pundits, I will tell them now that if there was ever a time and happening where I let my feats of fantasy “become” my reality, it was my near-yearlong journey through Australia, hands down. I call it the period of Transference—transference in that perspective transfers from one reality to another, as the physical world remains the same.

Surely, anyone knows how different the world may seem when you are on one great, long High. The air seems to smell sweeter, the sun seems to shine brighter and the birds seem to sing louder.

As far as pseudo-scientific explanations go, the reason for this overall change in sensory perception is an excess of dopamine and serotonin flowing into the brain (guesswork here). Even the color of the visual world changes, it presents itself in grainy, brightness that is usually seen in a sweet dream (note how the colors of dreams change depending on how good, bad, and sad they are.) Self-deception, overreaching ambition, and actual aptitude are all in one big state of confusion and conflation. But the mind finds relative ease in glossing over that confusion.

At least, this was the way it all seemed to me from the end of August, 2008, wrapping up the summer at French Woods, through a brief foray to Los Angeles in the beginning of September, till the moment I crashed in Australia in February, 2009 (Not sure exactly where to pin down the place of the crash, either at the wwoofing farm in Gingin, upon backtracking to Perth, or returning to Adelaide—an eventful month.)


The Crash—where then, the worst sinks its head; vision becomes defined by the colors of a miserable day marching through the pouring rain. To think, before, I was climbing the hills near the beaches at Goolwa, on a gorgeious South Australian summer day (December). Afterward, I’m trudging down the sidewalks in Adelaide, feeling crushed and defeated after calling it quits on a needed odd job, the rain pouring down on me. It’s now autumn (March).

At this time, though, I shift my perceptions to meet the change in my mood and circumstances. Where before the whole of the continent had epitomized wonder and wild imagination, I now reduce the scale of my fantasy and ambition from Greater Australia in general, to Adelaide, in particular. The City of Churches becomes the central hub of my ‘dream trip,’ and the Adelaide Travelers Inn becomes the oasis; my ‘unplanned community,’ if you will. A community of young nomadic souls converges in a collective vacation (or holiday, depending on which side of the pond you come from the grind of Real Life.

To be continued…