Mist

As I was looking through my inbox for a song lyric I needed I stumbled on an old email, copied below, that I obviously wrote in a frantic daze and sent to a friend who was very dear to me at the time. I never got a response from her, which is probably fair because the contents are equal parts intense, grandiose and unprompted. The sad thing is that it was probably meant as a gesture of warmth to someone I cared about.

I copy it here as a reminder of the "heavy fog" I found myself traveling during that time in my life and in honor of whatever kernel of insight about existence those convoluted words point to.

---

3/17/07

Wanted to get this down before I slip into a dreamless sleep. You're
the only one I can think to send it to.

As I left UC Santa Barbara in the heavy fog I passed the 101 South
entrance. There was a car behind me so I couldn't turn around right
away. He tailed me for some time as I curved around and made a left
onto a small country road, finally losing him. The mist was thick and
I could just make out fields of grass and brush on the side. It
reminded me of where I went to college.

I retraced my way back to the 101 and headed home. It was a long
drive and, except for my short pit stop for gas somewhere north of
Ventura, the entire twilight journey was shrouded in fog. I couldn't
see more than a few meters ahead of me as I drove at speeds upward of
80 miles per hour. It was like the world itself, or the wide reel of
my life, was being revealed to me in short spurts on the spot, with an
infinite multitude of the 'beyond' lurking in the mist, sleeping just
beyond the frame.

It occured to me that the places in our life and in our hearts are
like little breaks in the fog, little pockets of clarity in a vast,
thick, all-encompassing mist. When you take a step into the great
beyond, it recedes a little. But just a little. You can't see
everything. It may retreat bit by bit forever as you chase your own
personal unknowns into eternity, but ultimately it's bigger than you
could ever see all of with your own two eyes. That's why we have
license to take whatever chances we want to in life -- because
possibility is genuinely infinite. It all depends on where you want to
go.

But it's also one of the reasons, I think, that human beings crave
friendship, fellowship, love and contact with one another. Imagine two
people looking opposite directions in the fog, searching for their
own way home, and meeting one another, whether briefly or lingeringly,
in some secluded, stumbled-upon pocket in the mist.


Michael