MAY: Carry that Weight, Work Like Hell, Sleep Like a Dog

 Dear EN502,

Holy Moly--- last month was a big one.

I think I knew that, subconsciously at least, May was going to be a real battle when it began with rain. I'm not particularly superstitious. I am not afraid of 13th floors and salt has long gone un-thrown over my shoulder but, for it all, I truly believe that I received some sort of omen as I sat sipping coffee on the morning of May the first because my kitchen used to look out, through a window, over Commonwealth Avenue, and, on that gray morning, I sat watching mist rise and dark clouds hang low, like impossible lace, between the sky-scrapers and office buildings and luxury condominiums. Honestly, that might have happened on May 2nd but eh-- who remembers! An omen is an omen, I say. 

Weak divination aside, I think May was a particularly difficult month because people freak out when big things end. College is no exception. As such, in our stress and our frustration, some of us start throwing shit out (I am us, in this instance. I thew shit out). We burn bridges and push people away… I know I did! I cannot tell you how many beers I didn't grab in the name of being busy or stressed or just plain-old tired. The truth is that I wasn't any busier than I had been. It's not like I didn't have any time... It's just that heaven was closing fast on my fate. It's just that I was coming to the end, and I was getting ready to move out and I was so worried about packing up my apartment and my life that, truthfully, I was scared I could not bear the weight... Do you know what I mean? 

I have known a particularly devastating maxim to be frequently scrawled upon the hearts of born pilgrims, dutiful postal workers, independent bookstore owners and semi-professional painters (just to name a few): you're faster on your own. Sitting here, now, thinking back on this strange May and the twenty-one other Mays that have proceeded it, I can finally come to understand that maxim as a lie. The next time my life as I have known it comes to an end, I'd like sand down those letters: erase them. The stain they leave will always be there, but I think I would've liked a little more weight before I left that table in the gloom back in Boston… 

Anyway, with all this existential garbage and groaning, I found myself pretty burned out by the time graduation had come and gone. My mother lives in a beautiful house with a big back-yard and two Samoyeds in the Hudson Valley, New York. After graduation, I went down there to spend some time and try to get out of my own head for a while. It was there, on her back porch which commands a view of the early summer grass and the windy treetops that sway far, far above, that I saw the Samoyeds bolting across the yard. I watched them chase squirrels and gophers. Apparently, they have been known to catch and kill possums, snakes, and other woodland creatures. My mother's property is divided between the backyard and the front which faces a shady, iddillic Hudson Valley street. Later that same day, I watched with wide eyes as her neighbor's children toddled off the school bus. Much to my existential surprise, instead of waddling back to their houses, they came into her front yard and threw themselves at the Samoyeds who rolled around with them and licked them and were, in that moment, two perfect beings of love and joy. By the time the sun went down, the sky had begun to burn all orange and pink. The light was coming in from the West in that soft, early summer kind of way and I was sitting at the kitchen table writing and watching these two white wolves as they had folded their paws over one another, as they had sheathed their long fangs and their happy tongues. While the day was living, they were both fierce wolves and squishy puppies but, in the end, to do it all again, they slept...

Anyway, night fell and dinner was made, eaten, and cleaned up. I went upstairs to my old room. This was, of course, on the last day of May. I was sitting there in the quiet, just kind of looking. After a while, I got bored so I opened a window because the night was dark and lovely. I could hear a freight train from down by the river. Some night-critter, who had survived the wolves who prowl the shady places of the yard during the day, rustled in the bushes far below my bedroom window. I decided that, in times like these, it is best to be like a samoyed: unflinching in the hunt, unashamed in love, and uncompromising in rest. Work hard, but sleep like a dog, EN502. The world is wide and wild and we will need to do both.

Well, that about does it for me! Next Month, I'll be leaving for Spain and won't return until deep September. I'll be setting up a picture of the day from our Adventures on the Camino De Santiago-- more details on that to follow! I hope everybody's doing well! Congratulations Ramsey on a truly outstanding article (go read it!) and a huge "LET'S GO!" for Hannah's super cool new job! I’ll be in and out of cell service and well beyond the term of my Verizon phone plan while I hike through the Basque country so please, please reach me at Moore.NCJ@gmail.com. Onward! 

Your Comrade in Creative Non-Fiction, 

Nicholas