BUMP IN THE ROAD

Once again, I am alone.

In my aloneness, I was coming to terms with a new direction from what had been a radical commitment to pursue quietness in the beauty of a subtropical isle. It was to be a time for reflection, for consolidating and celebrating past work that could eventually extend to new initiatives... essentially a time to slow down and enjoy life.

But abruptly, almost overnight, inextricably, unexpectedly, things changed. Some might call it a "bump" in the road, but this was much more pivotal.

What made me return to the streets of NYC was much more than a bump. It was seismic. I had been convinced by someone very special that I should spend my remaining years in quiet reflection and writing rather than maintaining the frenetic pace that had defined my year-round academic and artistic practices. Although summer was usually a time for slowing down in Academia, it was my busiest time. Every year was an evolution of ongoing praxial experimentation and deepening awareness of collaborative process.

But there I was, in a new commitment, in a new world. I was inspired by companionship in a setting where well-being was the essence of Jeju Island, a setting where the arts flourished, and the air and food were abundantly alive, and the Jeju skies were an elegant panorama of dazzling change.

But then one evening at dinner I was trying to make a silly joke by rolling some seaweed into a cigar. I was met by a remark that told me the dream was over.

For a while I continued my quest alone...relishing every moment of an island of such spiritual resonance that even personal disaster is transformed into insight and inspiration.

Eventually, I returned to New York City, and continued my spiritual quest by trying to determine how dreams begun in Jeju could someday be a setting for healing and collaboration of artists from the around the world in sharing and creating new work.

Returning to New York was more painful that I expected. When I walked in the front door I was overcome with tears, speechless. The intensity of the past ten months collapsed on me, and the spiritual scaffolding came crashing down.

So I slowly began to reclaim my identity, focusing on changing my apartment functionally, redoing the kitchen, learning to cook and establishing a regimen more like the way of life I had learned while in Jeju.

My vision for a retreat in Jeju was renewed through setting up new activities and interactions with students, colleagues, and new people entering my life. For about five weeks, the progressive realization of a new vision had given me a sense of renewal and a deeper focus and resolve.

All was going well in my recovery, until suddenly, from out of nowhere, I hit a bump in the road.

In the course of any quest, we inevitably encounter that unexpected bump in the road. But "unexpected" might be merely rhetoric, a convention born of story telling. The unexpected aspect might refer to the timing. Instinctively, you know it's coming, but you never know when. The bump itself is deliberately ambiguous. In today's world of Googling, you might be amazed to see how much nonsense is generated concerning a "bump in the road." Add me to the nonsense.

 One aspect of my return to New York was walking. Even though at 81, I've had some issues with locomotion, one aspect of change I experienced in my life after academia was the joy of walking. Walking and enjoying the night with a partner was a new experience, and a delight.

In my youth, I was a serious walker. Walking and writing were synonymous.  I walked in Amarillo, and wrote poems. I walked the city during my college days at Texas Tech, and I walked New York City, at times following the paths of Walt Whitman when he had the print shop in Brooklyn and crossed to Manhattan on the ferry, walking the famed printers row that no longer exists in lower Manhattan.

On a clear day as I walked east on Houston Street, I came upon Mulberry Street. I turned right and headed south.  As I came to Grand Street, to that sliver of Little Italy that still exists in the midst of Chinatown, I hit a bump in the road.

Memories of an improbable scenario, a fairy tale of two old souls lost to each other for centuries, only to discover each other in separate hemispheres, returned to me like a "haunting refrain...lingering like a haunting refrain." (Yes, I'm a romantic.)

 Suddenly I was hearing what I have always thought are among the most imaginative lyrics I've known:

You go to my head with a smile
That makes my temperature rise
Like a summer with a thousand Julys
You intoxicate my soul with your eyes

 It had been the end of summer and a new season of my life.

Returning to the street where it all began reminded me that the season was over, and I was filled with regret.  It was disarming.  Somehow the past derailed the journey... and I was looking into the wilderness, trying to get my bearing.

Still I say to myself
Get ahold of yourself
Can't you see that it never can be

Songwriters Haven Gillespie and Fred Coots expressed for me the magic of that summer of 2017. It was a summer that intoxicated me like a thousand Julys and brought a miracle to NYC.

And suddenly I was stumbling over a bump in the road right there on Mulberry Street.

JEJU RENAISSANCE (PART TWO): A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

During my years in high school, I had come across Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger. The discovery of this posthumous novel was a revelation as it seemed to address my own crises during those years. Twain wrote multiple versions of this novel, and one critic's claim that Twain's issues and questions have become irrelevant is an example of such critical hubris with regard to this serious dimension of Twain.  He wrote a number of versions of this final novel which was pieced together by scholars after his death. Little did I realize then, that just as his book had served as my mysterious stranger, I would encounter a similar visitor more than 60 years later.

As I prepared for my final summer at New York University and our final articulation of the international multimedia workshop IMPACT, I remained inspired but somewhat fatigued from 50 years of commitment to to a process of implementing a vision for the future that served to pioneer new programs. I would soon begin a terminal sabbatical, but I couldn't see beyond that. The world terminal loomed ominously.

But in May 2017, I encountered a stranger, a mysterious stranger...mysterious because the stranger came from out of nowhere but appeared to know everything about me, including a sense of future fortune. It was almost as though the stranger had come from my remote past, perhaps a previous lifetime that was now vividly present.

The stranger was magical, playing to my sense of fate and entanglement, turning the present into a series of transforming moments by embarking on a journey to new terrain, uncovering destinies I somehow had neglected. "Who are you?" I asked. The stranger smiled and shrugged, gesturing toward an evolving entity that began to take shape.

"I was hoping you might remember..." The stranger pointed to mountains on an island by conjuring images of lush terrain, waterfalls, volcanoes that had given the island a sacred presence, of Seobul, a Chinese emissary, who had visited this island seeking the source of life and well-being more than two-thousand years ago. I could feel the magic spell of the island.

I recalled that I had been told of this island before, and had felt drawn to the magic of its location bounded by the Pacific Ocean and the Yellow Sea.. I remembered my story for a film that had begun to emerge of an older man who was on a quest to find the love of his youth and travelled the world, following clues that eventually led him to the isle of Jeju.

As I dwelt upon these incantations of the future, the stranger conjured a marvelous odyssey that led me to Jeju. In that deep mysterious enclave, I felt the immense presence of Mount Halla (Hallasan), the volcano that gave final shape Jeju as it erupted into existence 100,000 years ago. It can be seen from everywhere on Jeju as among the tallest mountains of Asia. Jeju island is just 25 miles across (north/south axis) at its widest point and some 45 miles long from west to east. Initially, the island was formed by volcanic activity two million years ago. I stood on the seacoast rock near Mount SanBangSan on this part of the island that stretched back to two million years. It is a wild and raw terrain, with winds so fierce at times that I could lean against the wind and be held upright. I walked up Seongsan Ilchulbong (Sunrise Peak), the volcano that is the signature image of Jeju.

In Jeju, I found such wonders, and a sense of spiritual renewal. Anyone would be stunned by the richness of the plants and vegetation, the abundance of fish from such varied oceans, and the majestic skies defining the more than 300 volcanoes and tremendous forests that are the habitat of an array of birds and wild life, including the 60,000 wild horses on Mount Halla.

Of all the renaissances that have renewed my spirit, nothing has touched me as deeply as this quest to this island of antiquity that has long been a destination for spiritual renewal, healing, and well-being. In many ways this new quest wiped away impediments structured by a mindset developed over the years, and at 81, I seemed catapulted back to myself at 18, perhaps an historic palindrome. Suddenly I felt the surge of energy in the midst of an island serving as an icon for spiritual well-being and freedom.

The stranger, reading my mindset, created a new panorama and then just as unexpectedly as appearing, vanished.

I was alone.