Of the Merits of Thrift Part 3

I blame Henry David Thoreau for just about all of the existential dilemmas that I have ever had. When I was first introduced to Thoreau, of course, it was Walden. I carried a copy of Walden for a number of months in the early years of college. I was in my early 20s, back from a couple of overseas tours with the US Army, and I was learning that there was much less to life than I had been led to believe.

I can still see the tender blossoms of the cherry trees on campus on the fragile March day when I first read Thoreau's words. I would read a chapter at a time. I would read the chapter and then think about it. I would think about it some more, sometimes until it hurt and then I would think about it more. Then, I would read the chapter again. For years, I could quote Walden the way those charlatan-like people can rapid fire a Bible verse at the slightest small talk.

What I learned from Thoreau was insidious. What I learned from Thoreau was by thwarting convention, I would have more time to live. More time to live meant that I could experience more life, more nature. And should I have wanted to push it, in being more in nature, I would experience the oversoul.

All very well good, but I was an urban dweller. In my day to day existence the only nature I saw were the weeds coming up through chipped pavement. I got to see the manicured trees on campus or governor's park. I could see the distant rocky mountains out the western windows of tall buildings.

There was more nature in the city than I would have believed before I started to look for it. There were trees, still are. These trees come from holes in concrete sidewalks. They grow through metal grates and then they leaf out. In the winters the bare branches host discarded plastic bags, but in the summer there are song birds and cicadas and squirrels.

I found, under Thoreau's tutelage, the nature I was seeing in the city was more human, more transient, more intimate. I met other students. I met artists. I met restaurant workers who worked long enough to buy smokes and beer. I met people who shunned by society while they were quietly and bravely dying of AIDS. I met people who wanted more. I met people who were content to live with even less.

Making my way though these days, it was the artists I really admired. They all seemed to live in derelict buildings where they were the only residents. They had wild looks, dirty hair. Even if they could scrape together a few dollars for beer, or a few smooth words for sex, they still spent their days painting, or sculpting or drafting poetry.

I did not write poetry. I did not drink coffee. I did not smoke. I was not a fashionable guy in any way, but I went to the coffeehouse late nights. I listened to the poets read. I wanted to join their ranks. I did not want to join their ranks because I thought I could do what they were doing better, or even as well. I wanted to join their ranks because they seemed free. They were free from the things that seemed to be ever invasive and somehow dirty to me. They all seemed to be free of those big sprawling houses that I heard were all over the places just outside of my central Denver neighborhood. They all seemed to be free on Tuesday mornings when everyone else was at work. They all seemed free of all those institutions that take away all the time and money and thought.

I wanted nothing more than to be like the artists that I met. I wanted to be like those restaurant workers too, who only seemed to work enough to buy booze and snacks and good times, but I was searching for something deeper than petty hedonism. What I was looking for was a stripped down way of life that could afford me my thoughts above a material good that demands more time than I was willing to give.

I had been putting pen to paper for a few years at this point. I had written a handful of stories. I had kept a personal journal, especially for the months I was in the middle east. I had painted one picture, and I had painted it very poorly. And above all, I was in college. I had very little money. I was influenced by all sorts of people, the people at school, the people at the various jobs, the people in my neighborhood.

The decision to become a writer was not an easy one to make. It was okay to want to be a writer while in college. It was a fancy thought as a young person. But what would happen once I got out of college? How was it that I would pay all my bills and be a contributing member of god, society and economy? And when it came to all of that, would I have to choose to be a worker over being a writer or vice versa?

What I came to was this: no matter what I did, I would have to have the ability to walk away from it should it take up too much of my time, my energy or my creativity. Because at this particular time when I was making such decisions, I was reading Ralph Ellison and Langston Hughes. Sure, in the beginning, there may have been the word and the word may have been god, but what about the onset of consciousness? In the consciousness there is art and art is an all important fragile entity that must be cultivated and fostered and cared for and then, only then, be harvested.