Like a Flashlight in a Tanning Salon

Preface: It's remarkable how the walk home from Quincy Center, especially after a long day and/or night, can literally exhaust the thoughts out of my head. Having said that....

Freedom. It's easy to define... with words. In theory and in practice, the concept becomes more muddled. We went out for drinks tonight after Film Club, and after talking to Alisha, I quite admire the fact that she's going back to work - at a neighborhood flower shop - at 1 in the morning. Because she wants to, and because she can. Through subconscious association, I connect this action to the second semester of my sophomore year in college - doing actual work (even if that often meant reading, watching, writing about, and making films), but also freely wandering the city of Boston (downtown, the Common, Beacon Hill, Cambridge, Somerville, etc.) - at all hours of the night. Wandering, and going places, in the middle of the night. A wonderful feeling to have so many goals and options, at such witching hours. Sure, I feel a bit more chained living in the 'burbs, when the yellow house on Common Street is my destination most nights after 10, and almost all nights after 1. But I had a limited range even in Austin, even in Somerville. I had wonderful experiences within those ranges, but it was always in one direction. Before, when I lived at 6 Arlington Street, overlooking the Garden... it was like living at an oyster bar.

I wrote the above passage about a month ago. Revisiting it today, it's easy to see that I was mistaken. Or rather, I was limited perceptively. The possibilities for enriching and pleasureful experiences exist everywhere in this world... I merely found it easier to create them while living in the middle of a fairly large city - in the middle of the night, anyway.

That's the other thing: I jumped off from the perspective of a night owl, which I am - not only do I seem to come alive at night, but I feed keenly on my surroundings, in the moonlight, when everything takes on a peculiarly indescribable nocturnal quality - but that, in itself, is a philosophical limitation; it's only one side of the coin. I feed on my surroundings in daylight too, just in a different manner. But to ignore that for the sake of a philosophical treatise on adventure... that's just silly.

Then again... I did ignore it! There must be something to the whimsy of the mind, the pen, and the keyboard. I guess the only thing to take from this - before I pull another about-face - is to open the mind as much as possible while simultaneously thinking critically about the information that said open mind yields.

I will say this: I did not expect to find myself in the middle of this particular mental dialogue when I began typing a short while ago. But in such a situation, I feel a strong urge to simply throw this one to the gods of cyberspace, and click on that button that says "Publish Post--"