A Jumble of Anxiety and Plans Related to an Extended Vacation

I love cemeteries, from Arlington National Cemetery just outside of D.C., Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, and the Spanish moss draped Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, GA they have been some of the most striking places to visit in all seasons. In these places there always happens to be an eerie shift where I cross over from curiosity to morbid self-reflection. The trigger that spurs this mental shift from idle speculation to one more vulnerable happens when I count dates from birth to death only to realize how close together they were, how brief the life under stone lived. Other times, it is from a carved graven birthdate that is the same as my own, just some hundred years different. The direction of my thoughts changes when I see a particular name that has always held some special vitality and there it is, proving me wrong as it sits atop a dead person. The epitaph is difficult to read but spells out a plaintive tragedy. In italics at the center, “Insatiable archer, can not one suffice?” Above, “lost at sea” below “died at sea.” Their deaths were only two years apart. Grand and strange and brief, such is life and not sphinxes.

So while I walked around Mt. Auburn in Cambridge on a beautiful day I fought a prickly feeling that had followed me all day. Part of it was that creeping knowledge of mortality, which feels rather trite, but true. The other part was more just general simmering anxiety. I finished my contract, the job is done and I haven’t signed on to a new one so there is a degree of uncertainty ahead. That too felt trite, like I said “like” 15 times in a span of two convoluted sentences, too loudly. At many times in life I am only comfortable if I have a job to do, and now that I do not have a place to go that will pay me money (for however brief a time) the productivity police will find me and haul me off to the jail of work ethic where I must serve time for any idleness.

This is the color card I give myself at this point, both referee and player.

Brief tangent, I live in a neighborhood which has its very own specific rock: Roxbury puddingstone. Attached is a photo of said rock, which is just a onetime lake-bottom that cemented silt with pebbles, creating a sedimentary conglomerate. I would not want to eat this, but I understand how it looks appetizing under all that lichen, resembling a bunch of nuts and raisins in a soft bready pudding. Jelly seems to like the way the puddle water on these rocks tastes.

The idleness police won’t get me as long as I sharpen my coping, by walking, by avoiding planning, by looking over there and photographing the chipmunks and listening to all the murderiest of podcasts and climbing the random tower in the middle of the cemetery. The tower was built in 1854, dedicated as the Washington Tower (because we were boring back then and only named things after the first president). According to the cemetery’s history page on their website it is 62 feet tall, on a summit 125 feet above sea level. It gave me a wonderful view of Cambridge and the Charles river and the Boston skyline.

My knees were noodles by the time I came back down though, the act of descending somehow reminding me how high I had been. The strange after effect of anxiety, threat over and energy spent. I’ll really be alright, allowing myself a little hyperbole seems healthy as I deal with the prospect of being unemployed over the entire month of June.

One reason I took a job that requires travel was so that I could learn to be more flexible, I could learn that plans can be made spur of the moment, there will always be a house to rent with a grocery store nearby and even if there isnt I will figure out a plan B. Or C, or D, or whatever. It doesn't have to sit on my Google Calendar in color-coded perfection for months to be a good plan.