The visitor, the lamp, killing time

Everyone has their limits. Everyone gets what they want. Sometimes I wonder what the hell I think I'm doing with my life. Am I trying to prove something? Just innocently taking time off?
What is my limit? At what point will I set sail for home?
Perhaps this is too frank, but - I am at the end of my financial rope, all credit cards maxed out, bills starting to go unpaid, no money in the bank and none on its way.  - it's really time to start working. But at what?
I did as I planned in "Irish Faerie" - I applied for a few jobs, and let God decide where I was going next, or at least begin to. They were: two posted jobs in Asia, one in Singapore, the other Hong Kong, and a firm in Vancouver that wasn't hiring. It was the firm in Van I heard from, we met and they may have a place for me in the new year. That would be fantastic, they do great work! But, in my meanderings, I also met someone at a First Nation I would love to work with, and they may have work for me too. Or neither might. Working directly for the First Nation, on the project envisioned, is an absolute once in a lifetime opportunity. That would open every door I want open in my professional path, and some in my personal journey too (as if there's any difference anymore!).

"Never get outta the boat. Never get outta the fuckin' boat - not unless you're gonna go all the way." - Captain Willard said that in Apocalypse Now, on their way up the river. He and the cook had gone into the jungle for water and a tiger attacked them (kind of half-heartedly). He followed it with, "Kurtz got outta the boat."
If, in choosing a particular lifestyle for myself, I have gotten out of the boat - what is my destination? Am I, ultimately, just killing time? In the big picture?... Again, how far am I willing to go?

I'm flying back to Vancouver in a few days. Do I buckle down and be responsible, or take further professional and personal risks? I think the important thing is, whatever I do - to do it consciously and intentionally, and from my heart. I have a feeling that if I take the riskier road - it may lead somewhere nice; a high mountain, bright sunshine, or something unknown, as I awaken in the big country.

                      This is My fold,
O thou ram horn'd with gold,
Who awakest from sleep
On the sides of the deep.
On the mountains around
The roarings resound
Of the lion and wolf,
The loud sea, and deep gulf.

Like in a yoga pose, when you start to tremble and think you can't hold it any longer, but you say to yourself - 'just a little more, it's ok,' so I have said to myself on this journey a few times. And now at last - I really can't see how to hold it any longer. And that, I suppose - is the place where beauty lies.
And again I notice - as the day approaches to get on a plane (2 days!), that increase in energy, drive, happiness - to get in a car, on a plane, it doesn't matter where I'm going, or where I'm coming from.
And there's also that moment that I've been wanting to write about since I started this blog, and I'll probably only start to describe it here. I'd love to quote some poetry but I've never heard anyone describe it before, and I don't know if anyone else even feels it. I felt it.. last night, two nights ago? I haven't named it yet, I don't know if I will, or can.
The first time I recognized it was in Quebec in 1993, I was visiting some friends in Granby on my second hitchhike across Canada. It was evening, we were sitting around a campfire, I was with a girl I had been in love with the year before, her boyfriend, and their friends. They were singing and playing guitars, I was the visitor. That may be a good temporary nickname for the feeling; "the visitor."
I was sitting, leaned back on a camp chair, in the half light and firelight. I looked at them all, and I saw the spectrum of my life; that I was here today, that I would be somewhere else tomorrow, and many many places in turn...  I don't know - the transitoriness of it all, the profundity, to care deeply for people, to love and enjoy a moment, and to also see it for what it is - something that will pass. I've felt it maybe a dozen times in my life - usually when I was travelling, but not always.
2009, August - again, sitting by a campfire, not sure if it was even burning. Ontario, Madoc to be specific. I was at the camper of my fiancee. Our relationship was crumbling, and rapidly. Honestly - I had thought we were 'soul mates,' and she the answer to all my dreams of another person. Sitting alone by the fire, in a camp chair (strangely enough) I was reflective, and there it came again - that feeling: that this was just a moment in time. I was happy and sad. Crushed to see the truth. Liberated by the truth.
All things are transitory.
Andre. Vancouver Island, probably August again, 1992. I had met two sisters on Long Beach, from Granby(Yes, one was the girl mentioned above), one I fell for, the other was a great friend, and we travelled together around Vancouver Island for about three weeks.
Somewhere around Sooke - we met a guy named Andre, he picked us up hitchhiking. He was Quebecois, a traveller. He had some amazing travel stories from all over the world, a scar on his face from a machete attack on some beach in Central America, a cool guy. As we sat and listened to his stories, and started to see a pattern, Jessica said, "it seems like you're always alone in your stories, do you always travel alone?" A shadow crossed his face, he paused, and said, "always alone, ... always alone."
What could we say to that? We said nothing, we left. I feared it. I feared to be like him, or others I met, brighter or darker, richer or poorer, who had taken the road of 'The Road' and lived great lives, but been alone, always separate.
September, 2010. Mt. Shasta, Northern California. I know I've mentioned this before, did I also mention that I used to make fun of Mt. Shasta, in my mind, because I had some 'pseudo-spiritual' friends that talked big about it? I am repentant. Of my now more than six months of travel - those two days were the tipping point, in so many ways.
Ultimately - "we are all just visitors here" - how do we want to make each moment be?

I was driving in my car, approaching what I have since come to consider a sacred place, and I felt acutely how I had been alone for days, driving up from LA, staying in little hotels, long days, listening to the music I wanted, loving life and what my eyes were drinking in - rolling green mountains, orchards, cities, coasts, human life and nature in synchronicity. I felt it, I felt myself as a visitor, the feeling was fleet, returned later and stayed with me into the next day; as I climbed and clambered on the mountain, cried and laughed, at the absolute beauty of the place, at the wonder of my being there, alone - to feel it and experience it in all its fullness.
In that moment in the car, approaching, I realized all at once - I was, A - happy to be alone, B - not alone. I had come home to 'Me.' I felt as 'unlonely' as I ever had in my life.
The feeling was sustained.
After I walked on her a bit I drove into town and rented a cheap motel and spent the whole next day up there. With 'Andre.' With me. With a Mountain. A mountain is a person. They are beings. I know that sounds crazy, but maybe you haven't spent enough time there. Maybe I haven't..
And yet, at the same time, that feeling came to me over and over again, in waves. Of being a 'visitor', of 'just passing through.' It was the point where I finally came to peace with it; I am who I am. My nature is to travel, I don't actually know what that means, for the shape of my life, but I love it, and me, and I don't feel afraid of Andre anymore. I feel, perhaps arrogantly, like I have gone beyond that point - that this sense of peace and happiness is not fleeting. The only fleeting aspect of it is if I turn my back on it, on my Self. Andre, Shasta, and everyone else - are welcome to hop into the bus and come along.
If it is my nature to be energized by travel, then certainly my life, the days, moments, people, that I experience, attract, have, the things I do and the passion I put into everything - will be better, because of that.
Of course, there will be moments coming up of fear and doubt, I will turn my eye back to shore at some points, at least for a moment. I may seek safety, I may go farther, I don't know.
But this energy, this power, is the most alive thing in me right now, so I will try to hold the course.

Burn, then, little lamp ; glimmer straight and clear -
Hush! a rustling wing stirs, methinks, the air :
He (She?)* for whom I wait, thus ever comes to me ;
Strange power ! I trust thy might ; trust thou my
       constancy.