STIRRED

On one hand I am searching- on the other hand I've found it... well, perhaps not totally, but in part.

In truth I feel very much at home in this city. And it feels very right for me. But I am poor for the first time in my life, and that makes me scared. I suppose I can always go home- so I am never without a certain security- but the financial freedom my career afforded me was so wonderful (and I can honestly say- NOT taken for granted- so I am glad I was awake and smelling the roses for the past few years...). But now I am in a city that has basically NYC prices, but where you make (I don't know where, but somewhere real poor, Memphis perhaps?) wages.

And the gap between what you make and what you spend is so wide... it's bewildering how people do it.

I think we as humans adapt to our surroundings- America is a real gung ho place...everyone is driven, everyone is ambitious. In my case my drive and ambition drove me right the fuck out of the country....

Someone told me once (when I was in my teens) that the most interesting people he had ever met changed their life at 30. Maybe that has been in the back of my mind this whole time- I don't know...

But I gave up a really lucrative career- and I don't have a fucking clue what for?

I stay genuinely optimistic... and I guess, for the first time in my life, I am discovering faith. Not religious faith- but faith in life- that everything will work out, that whether it is meant to be, or fate or whatever.... but that everything is OK. Everything is alive and breathing and beautiful- and the mother earth will take care of me- and I am in Rome right now- and I feel lucky, and grateful, and humbled by life's possibilities.

And sometimes when I talk to my friends back home- doing their hum drum thing- and they tell me there ain’t jack shit going on... and I ache for that a little- that security, that familiarity... but I was in that for so long. I played it safe for so many years- and I had forgotten about ALL THE THINGS THAT CAN HAPPEN IF YOU STEP OUT THE FRONT DOOR... you know? There’s a whole world out here- and you and I are in it- in a way that we weren't before.

It’s heavy- the weight of the world. And maybe it is a cross to bear- but I bear it gratefully, and gladly. Because playing it safe made me sad. And right now, all this change- doing it THIS HARD CORE is really.... big. And scary (but I think if it wasn't scary it would mean I wasn't paying attention.) And so, I feel happy.

Genuinely happy.

I look up and I see the coliseum. And for a place that saw so many massacres in its history- I cannot covey the stupid happiness that place makes me feel. And I see it everyday. And the traffic- I hated being trapped in a car in LA- I feel like the traffic here is a ballet. And even though it’s so cold sometimes on my Vespa- it is so stirring to be out in the world- on the road… bouncing along on the cobblestone- not cushioned by fancy American absorbent shocks….

You know?

I feel invigorated by the way the light hits the buildings… these buildings that were built 2000 years ago as a celebration and an homage to the empire that was once Rome. I am in love. I am in love with the city.

I had a deep well of sadness in me for a long time living in Los Angeles… vacuous LA… I don’t have that here. ( I don’t fool myself that it can’t return… it just feels so far away right now…)

And it makes me so grateful. And humbled- to be here- present, alive, awake. Stirred.