Chrysalis

The gentle spring sun was diffused with cotton candy and cobweb parasols of clouds. The breeze would sometimes carry a hint of chinook violence down off the Roof of the World. The trill of hummingbirds served as the day's soundtrack. A perfume of green awakening and river and melt cologned the atmosphere. The scent of dynamic.

I rode my bicycle down valley to return my rented documentary. Early May is perhaps the swan song days of the limbo of mud season, but already, there are more travelers about. The first tour buses have passed through. There have been inquiries about the jeep roads in the area. More and more of this winter's cocoon peels away to reveal the landscape's summer skin.

There is a litany of things I love about this place; it's juxtaposition of geography, the climate, the closeness of history, that urban/wildlife interface that is so much different than flatter places I've lived-yeh, it ain't Africa or India with the really big cats, or the Indonesian islands of Komodo, Rinca, Flores, Gili Motang, and Padar where there be dragons, literally, but you understand-the stories and secrets yet to be discovered, the nearness to the nowheres and never-nevers. Yet, when it comes down to brass tacks and bedposts, it's the uniqueness, or the perceived uniqueness of the place, the subtle dynamic, that overall funk, because you gotta have the funk, that holds me. If that wasn't here, I would probably have long ago grown restless, and been seeking my entertainments elsewhere.

I would say recent events have gotten me meditating upon the perceptions of success and happiness, but that might be a lie, given I seem to have something of an introspective streak. A bygone acquaintance told me his living in a suburban enclave as a federally contracted IT worker was living the dream. Whereas, to me, it sounded like a nightmare. He seemed a little dismissive when I told him small snippets of my life, but he was one of the ones back then who couldn't quite grasp why I didn't just toe the line of the social construct of reality. I had my own way to go and so it goes.

Comic book mantra;

"Suburbia is failure. Accepting suburbia means accepting less. It's a tiny slice of comfort. A rose from Lucifer, meant to buy you off. Rome is burning, and true comfort lies beyond the flames..."

One of my friends is on his way away, whilst a friend of my Sabina's is getting ready to move here, hoping to get involved with a wolf sanctuary. Both men are jumping off the ends of their tiny worlds into a great unknown. The grandest of adventures or the greatest of follies is a matter of aspect. Recently, I came across the term hack your life in the context of breaking from the gray apathy to live that metaphoric dream. How fluffy-bunny. Many years ago, my sister would wax lamentation about not being able to hit a cosmic reset button.

Contextually, I wonder of reboot is not a better description of what these two cats are about to do. I would say that is what I did when I came up to the mountains, and it hasn't been the first time. That Tao of Chaos of mine, because I do not do the social construct of reality. It seems as hardwired as the need to breathe. I endeavor not to look down my snout at those who do find their security homogeneity, although I sometimes might fail, I wonder if they'd grasp the secret of my success.

Then I wonder if it really matters...

It probably doesn't. There are two people I am acquainted with whom are facing major life changes. The world morphs from chrysalis to its latest form. Perhaps their is metaphor in that. Even if there's not, it might be interesting to see the shape of things to come.