Year in Review

Write this as fast as you can because this year went by like a blur and so this post must go by just as fast. I was thinking this morning that 2008 was kind of a bummer for me, but then I started to think, “Why the hell is that thought in your head? Only because of the aloneness--mostly self-imposed--that has enveloped around you for the past several months. Nonsense, you fool!”
On Dec. 31 of last year, a bunch of us – I with girlfriend then, a light-skinned Brazilian who wore a white dress mid-thigh level that night – went to a hick New Year’s party at the Holiday Inn outside Lexington. Was there a band there? No, I don’t think so. A DJ spinning the hits of the day, mostly country hits, as I recall, which forced me into a drunken stupor. We danced to them, by God, because this was New Year’s and we were a bunch of Brazilians who wanted nothing more than to celebrate a northern hemisphere New Year’s Eve party. We met Wendell, a retired schoolteacher from a nearby town, who was at the party alone. I bought him a bourbon. He tried to hit on one of the unattached Brazilian babes. At least, he had that going for him. I bought him another bourbon. He bought me one. My ex-girlfriend, brown eyes the size of moon pies, didn’t get mad when I got too drunk. The next day we watched football and talked about Wendell.
A few days later, I drove to Murray, defended my master’s thesis successfully. Then Monday at work at the State Journal in Frankfort, Ky., I handed in my notice. Soon, I had planned a trip to Central America and was on a plane flying to San Pedro Sula, where a woman I didn’t know picked me up and took me to the inn where I would stay for a few hours until she could run some errands before taking me to Copan Ruinas, where the mother of my childhood best friend owns a hacienda. I stayed at the Hacienda a couple nights, and the rest of the time, in the spare bedroom of my friend’s mom’s apartment. Part of the deal for the lodging was that I’d help out with the hacienda, though there was little to do. But what I could do was drive home the employees at the end of the night. I took to the job. 10 p.m. I was driving a truck up and down the hills of Copan, carrying three or four girls home, not understanding a word they spoke. The job lasted three days. I wrecked the truck, scraping its side on a driveway entrance tunnel that ran underneath her apartment complex. I was the only one in the truck. No one was hurt. My friend’s mom didn’t ask me to do anything anymore. I got drunk that night on beer and whiskey. Soon, I took a trip to Guatemala. I went to an active volcano and could spit in the lava flowing by it was so close. I went to the Tikal ruins in northern Guatemala and somewhere around there contracted a hell of a case of diarrhea that left me drained and defeated. A walking corpse with brown socks. I went back to Honduras and soon caught a flight back to the U.S.A.
I lived with the girlfriend then for almost a month, maybe a little less. Then, I packed up all my stuff and moved to Oregon. I cried three times. Once, a couple days before I was leaving, when I finally realized we were going to be done, the night before, and when I physically left. I still remember her wave as I drove off. My heart was heavy. The tears in her eyes made them look bigger than normal. And then I was driving and I wouldn’t let myself think of the past, not until I got out to Oregon, and then I thought about it a lot and I was mad that I’d been so hasty for my dreams of open road and secular adventure.
The trip to Oregon took me four days. I drove up to Wisconsin to visit a friend I had lived with in Germany, when we were professional football players, or at least semi-pro, and the world was ours to have and hold and take and grab and conquer and destroy. We were older now. He was married to a German girl and they were planning to move back to Germany. I wished him luck. He told me to come visit. I wondered if I would. Then I got in my car and drove down to Iowa, through Nebraska, on to Colorado, then Utah, and Nevada and Oregon. It was sunny the day I arrived. Nathaniel, my friend who convinced me to give the state a try, and I walked around town in shirtsleeves. It was sometime in mid-April. The next day we all drove to the Oregon coast and I loved the Oregon coast then and I love it now and I should go again as soon as possible because it is as fine of a place there is. But there’s other fine places in this area. There’s Crater Lake, and the Rogue River, the great Redwoods, and plenty of mountain lakes from which to pull trout, and I did and I ate them and thanked the great white light that shone down for the meal.
I started working. I was a freelance writer. Still do that some. And I worked as a clerk in an outdoor store all spring and summer and some in the fall. I was lucky enough to get on as a part-time writing and journalism instructor at the nearby community college and was pleased to know that some of my students learned something and some believed that I was a good teacher, and I felt that I was on to something.
In May, my niece, Eliza, was born. I celebrated her birth with friends in Oregon.
In July, my nephew and Godson, Henry, turned two. I flew home to celebrate at his party.
In September, my grandfather, Leslie, died. I flew home to honor him and to be with my family.
I am a writer. I have been a writer since the summer of 2000, when I wrote my first short story, a story which was long and treacherous and had no continuity or validity, but it was a story, and then I thought I was on my way to some sort of Hemingway-esque existence. I’ve tried. I’ve been a lot of different places and seen a lot of different people and had a few little adventures. I’m no Hemingway, though. My stories are better now, but they aren’t great and I wonder how can I forgive myself for being mediocre? I am scared of mediocrity and failure. I sludge on through the grind of daily writing and thought, ready to fail or succeed, whatever’s in store. There are other things I could be great at. And I remind myself that the world is diverse and I don’t have to write. I could do anything. I write, though.
But teaching is good. I like it. I can be great at that.
I realize I don’t know much about a whole lot of things. I’m amazed everyday, slackjaw in awe, at how much I don’t know. How do people get so smart?
I’ve begun to fill out applications for teaching jobs. I wonder where I’ll be next. This is where I am now, wondering what’s in store for me. This is where I’ve been for almost ten years. In all the places I’ve gone and all the women I’ve loved and all the jobs I’ve done, I’ve always wondered what’s next, what woman will I love next, what job I’ll try next. When will I be content? This writing you’re reading now has devolved into too much dreaminess and that’s not what I wanted when I started to write this an hour ago. I am tired of wondering. Tomorrow night is New Year’s Eve and then a new year begins again and I can only wonder what it holds for me.