"...Gonna Be Some Changes Made"

part two

To CODDIWOMPLE. It means to travel purposefully toward an as-yet-unknown destination. It is the perfect summation of my life, and especially this Horizontal Living project. I’ve NEVER known what I want to be when I grow up. I still remember graduation day from Cornell College, where I got my Bachelor’s Degree. I realized that the script had just run out, and I had no idea how to improvise. “Now what?” I’ve made it up as I went along, never with any confidence that I had a plan or knew where I was going, always jealous of those who seemed to have a script. From a very young age I felt deeply that the corporate, competitive world was not for me, so I was amazed to find a job selling books for a big New York publisher. “Maybe I was wrong,” I pondered.

I wasn’t. It was, I like to say, a Dickens of a job: it was the best of times, and the worst of times.

The day after the job ended (THAT’s a good story for another time) I thought again: “NOW what?” I decided to take an extended European vacation (3 months), with the idea that maybe being in new, unfamiliar places would enable me to think new thoughts. What I ended up doing was returning to a familiar default: going back to school. I enrolled in St. John’s College in Santa Fe. So I got my Master’s Degree at St. John’s, and did a ton of volunteer work (The Santa Fe Rape Crisis Center, the Eager Voter Project, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, Team in Training, and others). I made a good life in New Mexico, but could never make a decent living.

By January 2018 I knew I had to leave. I’ve long said, “I live to serve,” which often gets a chuckle, but I’ve always been serious. Hermann Hesse said it best, in Narcissus and Goldmund:

My goal is this: always to put myself in the place in which I am best able to serve, wherever my gifts and qualities find the best soil, the widest field of action. There is no other goal.

So I wandered around, and settled in Rochester, MN for 6 months, but it wasn’t happening there, either. I went back to Santa Fe, tail tucked between my legs, and was frankly suicidal at having failed to escape. (This is not a revelation to friends and longtime readers. I should note to new readers that this is not hyperbole: I was in trouble.) My friend Maia found me a job at a pet food store, which got me out of the fetal position and introduced me to some wonderful people – and their dogs! Canine therapy has always helped.

And then Maia did something else that helped: she started looking for a house outside of town. Something clicked. I’d thought that I would travel around, find someone who was desperate to hire me for a job for which I was unsuspectingly qualified, and I would move there. That didn’t happen. So I decided to look for someplace I wanted to live, move there, and see what I could find to do.

I drove through Dubuque in 2018. I’d taken a number of retreats at the Trappist monastery outside of town right after college, but never visited Dubuque before. In 2019, when I looked for places to move, I looked first for affordability, and then for a je ne sais quoi, something else to lure me. Turns out there is a river there. Santa Fe didn’t have much water, and I realized, when I was in Germany in 2011, how desperately I missed it. Affordable, regular rain and a river, and close to old stomping grounds. Why not? Moving in the midst of a pandemic isn’t recommended, but if you have to live in Trump’s America, Dubuque is a good choice.

Fast forward.

One of the things I’ve loved most about Dubuque is how easy/serendipitous it has been to be involved. The first person I met in town was a board member for the local Community Health Center (FQHC, as insiders call them), and soon invited me to join the board, whose chair I have now been for almost 2 years. I’ve written book reviews for the local fortnightly paper, and am the secretary of a neighborhood association.

But I loathe the country this is becoming. Like a self-absorbed high school bully who thinks he’s special because he’s discovered steroids. He thinks he’s the norm, and has no curiosity or respect for others’ struggles, perspectives, life experiences, hopes. He’s privileged, but has no accompanying sense of noblesse oblige.

I’ve begun to wonder what it would feel like, after nearly 70 unbroken years in a country that despises children (gun murders, education on a perpetually-tightening budget, failure to address climate change, a business culture that places profit above every other consideration, including the health of employees, community, and environment) and unironically refers to “American Exceptionalism,” to live in a culture with a social contract, where people feel a sense of responsibility for each other, enjoy each together, clean up after themselves, etc. In other words, I’m seeking out a kind of culture shock similar to what someone feels after being raised in an abusive home and finds themselves confronted with the fact that other families enjoy and support one another.

I’m seeking to experience other, healthier, kinder “normals.” More on that in my next post.