Blog Five

A reporter I knew many years ago would sit at his typewriter (computers weren’t around yet) and lean back in his chair and stare at the ceiling.

He did that because, he said, the best ledes were on the ceiling.

I don’t know about that but I’ll try anything to come up with a good idea. They are often very difficult to find. Usually, I just stare into the abyss of the computer screen or go to the bathroom numerous times.

Sometimes it just comes out of nowhere. Reminds me of a friend who was nearly killed in a motorcycle accident about 10 years ago. He was in a coma for three months before emerging back into consciousness.

He was going maybe 10 miles an hour and rounding a country curve when the bike slid out on gravel and he went down and cracked his head open like a walnut. Just like that. He was wearing one of those faux helmets that legally qualify as a helmet but offer next to no protection.

It took a brush with death to wake him up. After coming out of the coma, he decided to retire from his job with the police department and become a full-time hunting guide. This is a man who learned that his time is limited and was nearly snatched away without warning. He nearly died before understanding that there are no promises and plans, no matter how carefully laid out, can be instantly demolished.

Now he trains and raises his beloved hunting dogs, leads hunting forays far and wide and sports a long, long mountain man-like beard. And he is very, very happy with his new, relatively unencumbered life.

I’ve heard that the mountain man can just as easily fall asleep propped up against a log in the middle of nowhere as he could rest in a cushy hotel room. And he prefers the log.

Not me. I need pillows and more. The last time I went camping was probably 20 years ago and I’m still recovering from it. I can take the woods and the birds and the sounds and smells of nature in small doses. Beyond that I just want to move on to the neighborhood tavern.

Dylan once said even the birds aren’t free because they’re chained to the sky. He also said that the only true freedom comes with death.

My friend comes the closest I know of someone who has broken his chains. It was escaping death that brought him freedom.

In these times of involuntary quarantine, I think about these things a lot. I envy people who know their true calling and have the courage to go there, be damned the cost. Maybe my true calling is to always be looking for my true calling.

Something like the mythological Sisyphus who was damned to continue pushing a giant rock up a hill only to have it roll back down before reaching the top and having Sisyphus complete his futile efforts again and again.

Maybe Sisyphus’s struggles weren’t without worth. As the philosopher Albert Camus sad, “one must imagine Sisyphus happy” as “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.”