Curiosity Roving : V.18 : Chaos Control
Curiosity Roving
The Grand Adventures of L Rose Goossen
V.18 : Chaos Control
in which we say goodbye and hello
___________________________
Greetings and Salutations!
Welcome to the eighteenth volume of Curiosity Roving. I thank you kindly for your attention.
In September of 2020, I used Volume 17 to lay down both my pen and my sword, saying "It might be two months. It might be two years." As it turns out, the latter estimate was accurate. Hello reader: the spell is broken. I'm writing again.
I took a stubborn hiatus from most forms of art during the pandemic, and I used that time and space to give a fair trial to the Muggle Life. I took jobs. I bought Tupperware. I grew my hair. I got my vaccines. I paid my taxes. I finally got a driver's licence and bought my first car. I became a consumer. I lived with a man and a cat. I opened my mind to the possibility that I might be settling down. It was the first time in my life that I wasn't actively engaged in battle with the centrifugal forces of cultural convention, and it was very, very easy, but it wasn't sustainable.
Welcome to the eighteenth volume of Curiosity Roving. I thank you kindly for your attention.
In September of 2020, I used Volume 17 to lay down both my pen and my sword, saying "It might be two months. It might be two years." As it turns out, the latter estimate was accurate. Hello reader: the spell is broken. I'm writing again.
I took a stubborn hiatus from most forms of art during the pandemic, and I used that time and space to give a fair trial to the Muggle Life. I took jobs. I bought Tupperware. I grew my hair. I got my vaccines. I paid my taxes. I finally got a driver's licence and bought my first car. I became a consumer. I lived with a man and a cat. I opened my mind to the possibility that I might be settling down. It was the first time in my life that I wasn't actively engaged in battle with the centrifugal forces of cultural convention, and it was very, very easy, but it wasn't sustainable.
leaving home
Whether compelled by destiny or merely old habits, I have this tendency to move around. My time in the trenches of the mundane came to an end in late July. More specifically, I ended it.
I was in a relationship with someone who had no interest in learning to consider my preferences, and the basic comforts of our arrangement were no longer offsetting the psychological toll. I was dissatisfied with dead-end retail work and the economic structure that keeps the first-world working class in functional poverty. I was tired of tweaking the details and trying to improve something that maybe just wasn't all that good to begin with. Suddenly, it wasn't enough to sit on the beach and drink a beer and count my blessings. I needed a wholesale change.
on the road
So I cut my hair, quit my jobs, put everything in my car, and drove away. It happened quickly, and it probably looked like a snap decision, but I had spent an entire year waiting in readiness to recognize the opportune moment when it arrived. And behold: the road opened unto me. It's been a long chapter of pure flaming chaos, but here's the summary:
My car broke down on the first mountain pass. I gave it to a hitchhiker and took a ride with a wizard, burning off my possessions like a phoenix, because the price of the new life is always the old life. I bought another car and drove it across the prairies. I accepted three housesitting jobs in three towns, caring for a total of five cats, two dogs, six fish, and one rotating stripper pole. I haphazardly attended my third and fourth music festivals of the season and they felt like family reunions. I got COVID for the second time and lived like an outcast vagabond in my own hometown until my tests read negative. I ate three beautiful meals at my father's house before he died peacefully in hospital on September 13th. I served as DJ at his wake.
waves upon the sand
And now?
I'm driving off into the sunset in a red Chevy Cobalt, blaring Sharpie-marked CDs that I ripped and burned on the family computer when I was fifteen, screaming into my cracked windshield at the top of my lungs and giving thanks to have had a father who had the wisdom to teach me that life's not fair and that the dashboard is a drum kit.
Faced with a blank canvas once again, the weird fact of my life is that the easiest, simplest, most economical thing I can do right now is to go and travel for an indefinite period of time. I've accepted some very exciting invitations from some very good friends and made plans until the approximate end of 2022 that will take me through California, Mexico, and Colombia. It hardly even feels like a decision; it's just what happens to be happening, and I'm going with the flow.
back road friendliesI tried to live the standard narrative; it didn't work out for me. It was incredibly hard to build an entire life and to leave it, again. A lot of my friends are making babies and buying houses, and it all looks so cosy and wholesome. Meanwhile, I'm taking my busted-up heart and my shiny new trumpet on a magical mystery tour because I know that action has the power to paint me into the landscape of my own life. So far, the big picture looks a lot like a trust fall through the ether, and I can only hope to be wildly surprised, well met, and safe. I always have been before.
This is the baseline fact of artists; we have to do what we do. We can't not do it. If we try to dodge the calling of our vocations, we shrivel up and become embittered shadows of shattered souls that used to be people. Even if it doesn't make any damn sense, we still have to do it.
This is the baseline fact of artists; we have to do what we do. We can't not do it. If we try to dodge the calling of our vocations, we shrivel up and become embittered shadows of shattered souls that used to be people. Even if it doesn't make any damn sense, we still have to do it.
she's prettySo I'm writing! More specifically, I'm writing to you. I'm feeling rusty, dusty, flustered by the potential for poetics in every paragraph, feeling my mind reach out its fingertips for the ease, the fluidity, the certainty of control and the satisfaction of mastery that the act of writing used to grant me. I'm out of practice, but that's what this is for.
I refuse to succumb to what Charles Bukowski called, "the murdering of my years". Death is the only experience that is truly promised in this life; we all know that we'll never get out of here alive. I've accepted so much death in these last two months, and now, I want to find out what might be en route to enter this spaciousness.
liftoffSo, how would you like to come and see just a little bit more of the world with me?
See my magic carpet spewing technicolor fumes as it revs the timeless engine of bravado and mystique! Hear the hotline clanging at the Bureau for International Women of Mystery, lit up by callers hoping to catch a lift! Remember your mortality and kiss the joy as it flies! Do not be defeated by a simple failure of imagination! Your personal mythology is valid and beautiful! The integrity of your soul is not up for negotiation! Rejoice in the knowledge that we are but pawns in the great cosmic game, Sisyphean silkworms slowly knitting our own soft little shining ephemeral habitats, totally irrelevant and totally free!
Welcome back to my weird little niche on the internet, and thank you for reading. If you ever feel like responding to these newsletters, know that I welcome you.
Until next time, stay curious.
See my magic carpet spewing technicolor fumes as it revs the timeless engine of bravado and mystique! Hear the hotline clanging at the Bureau for International Women of Mystery, lit up by callers hoping to catch a lift! Remember your mortality and kiss the joy as it flies! Do not be defeated by a simple failure of imagination! Your personal mythology is valid and beautiful! The integrity of your soul is not up for negotiation! Rejoice in the knowledge that we are but pawns in the great cosmic game, Sisyphean silkworms slowly knitting our own soft little shining ephemeral habitats, totally irrelevant and totally free!
Welcome back to my weird little niche on the internet, and thank you for reading. If you ever feel like responding to these newsletters, know that I welcome you.
Until next time, stay curious.
-- Rose
PS: I've added a tip jar on Buy Me A Coffee. I've always believed that anything worth doing is worth doing for free, but one must keep up with the times - and the times are expensive. If you ever want to buy me a coffee, now you can!
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/curiosityroving
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