Austin Downtown Arts Magazine
Essays/Non-fiction
Use This One Instead
by Jodi Keeling
It was untamed passion that drove me out of town. Desire
had my heart in flames, my head swimming in the seas of vertigo.
And once again, my familiar world was riding the edge of existence.
Once again, I longed to see the vicissitudes of my life slowly
fade from view into a thin line, a dot, a nothing in the rear
view mirror as I motored on I needed clarity, and sought comfort
in the simple monotony of the High Plains landscape. I had
to GO. Those who know me nod knowingly amongst themselves
"there she goes again, running from."
To them I say NO, I am running TO.
For whenever life gets to be too much I find refuge in seeing
it all slowly disappear from view. Nothing-ness has a way
of giving me perspective. I love the void. For it is only
by facing the possibility of my own annihilation that I gain
anew understanding, it is only by getting away that I am truly
able to come back. And so I left Austin to visit my girlfriend
Mindy, not really knowing if I'd come back, or where I'd go
if I didn't. She was there, in Lubbock, helping her mother
Ruth Ann cope with the recent onset of blindness after having
an experimental surgery that was intended to improve her eyesight.
Some might say, such is life, we are living longer than ever
before. And maybe that's true. It is true though that Ruth
Ann's situation is not so unusual. In fact, it is not unusual
at all for an 80 year old woman to go blind while her 82 year
old husband also loses his mind to Alzheimer's. It seems you
and I, we are all living on a precipice balanced carefully
at the edge of the abyss.
The question then must be do we shrink or expand at the sight
of it? Ruth Ann, she copes with the void by holding fast to
the familiar. A voice-activated phone and computer keep her
linked up to those she loves. A series of daily eye exercises
everyday, doctors and an acupuncturist all help her to hang
on to what little vision she has left. I cope with suffocation
from the familiar by forever seeking-out the unknown. My life
has been a series of small cataclysmic events that continuously
plunge me into the abyss. I feel very uncomfortable when nothing
is happening. Monotony is death to me, the familiar suffocates
me and so I run. When nothing is happening, I run. Together
Mindy and I ran all the way to New Mexico to a tiny village
named Dixon. Our first night there I took a long walk out
into the snow capped hills. The shadows grew long in the bright
moonlight hanging, suspended in the starry sky. Taking in
a long deep breath I looked up to see the galaxy hanging over
me.
I laughed. I am sitting still on a spinning ball that is
hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour. I close
my eyes. Within I see a similar view to the stars that hang
over me. And it becomes clear to me that the passion that
propelled me here also draws me back to see my familiar life
anew, seek out the unknowns in the known, dive into the abyss
of the familiar and find a new leaf to turn over. I stand
up, turn and run home to stand still.
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