My favorite passenger

Last night, in Michigan's winter darkness, I was making a lonely drive home from Ann Arbor.

My only passenger was a shopping bag of Christmas presents for my children, who would be making their way home over the next few weeks. Home to me.

With a hundred miles to go, my Apple playlist was interrupted by a Bluetooth announcement - a call from Gainesville; from a too-far-away college campus. From my youngest son.

It seems like only yesterday he was buckled into his car-seat behind me. There was no Apple playlist in that car - just James and the Giant Peach, sweetly singing James, James, James, how are you...isn't it a lovely day? 

And in those days, I'd usually drive one-handed; twisting my arm behind me so that the beautiful boy could hold onto my finger while we drove.

But I must have been driving Einstein fast; warping away the years and morphing our minivan into a fancy SUV.  Because it seemed like one minute my passenger had his tiny fingers wrapped around mine and the next thing I knew he was talking to me about anthropology.

"Dad, have you ever looked into a virtual reality display? Once you do, your beliefs about the universe might change. You'll understand how easy it would be to create a virtual life - a holographic version of reality."

This from the same passenger who I just saw sitting in his car-seat, wispy blonde hair gently blowing in the open-window wind. From the same blue-eyed child whose most expressive act was to just smile, showing two tiny little top teeth.

But in those days - that was enough. In fact, it was everything.

"You mean like those big headset things?" I asked, being the hip dad I am.

"Yes, we have them at school. The textures and detail are so real, you would start to question just how real our lives might be. It's like life as a video game."

At 75 miles left, we began talking about music and poetry. The alluring constellations of music and pathos and metaphors. I told him that I could listen to Tupac for hours and hours; how I would become mesmerized and drawn by his lyrical sadness:

Nobody cries when we die
We outlaws
Let me ride
Until I get free... 

Oh, Tupac.

I confessed that it was scary that I could feel such empathy - and even an odd longing - for a place of gangsters and violence and death - a world I could never understand; a world turned hologram by music and art and poetry.

"Dad, don't you see? That's what I've been trying to tell you; that just because they speak of suicide and drugs and death, it doesn't advocate it - it's just part of the art form."



Now, I do see. It's a VR place.

Perhaps the evocative pigment of Monet's Haystacks will one day be compared with paintings of our current reality, where colors are words:

"I got pennies for my thoughts, now I'm rich
See the twenty's spinning looking mean on the six
wearing flags, 'cause the colors match they clothes
They get caught in the wrong hood and get filled up with holes" 

At 50 miles, we spoke of the city, the snow and being together for Christmas.

There, somewhere along the dark and cold shores of lake Michigan, he said, "Dad, I'm counting the days to be home with you." Me too.

Oddly, I don't remember feeling that same way about coming home from school.

And honestly, I don't remember the same kind of personal experience with my own father. From him, I'd learn how things were supposed to be. Sometimes, he'd show me what things could be. I'd watch him paint. Or play the piano. Interact with the world.

But he'd rarely ask me what was inside my head; how I felt about the world.

And with this youngest child, I think I've found that being a father isn't just about being a role model. It isn't just about showing your son what it means to be a good person. It's also about opening his mind wide to a sense of wonder, then questioning and challenging and pushing him into the void of infinite knowledge.

My father was talented, kind and generous. He helped me learn how to be a good person. But I'm just discovering that there are things he didn't do - couldn't do. Insights that I wish I'd been taught - and what I'm just learning now. Maybe they were too Yogi for my Victorian father.

I'm learning from that kid in the back seat. That a mix of the intellectual and the mystical - the lyrical and the musical - is what gives life to the world. And it melts the barriers of our worldview to see and explore a different, infinite galaxy.

At 25 miles to go, our call was almost over. My virtual passenger was going to the gym.

My favorite passenger. The one who always showed us his two top teeth.

Now, with so much more to say, he needed to let go of my finger.

And I can still hear "James, James, isn't it a lovely day?" when he disconnects.

Yep, it is.

An Atlas of Clouds, an Ocean of Poppies

“What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.” - Cloud Atlas

I have this envelope on the seat next to me. I keep glancing at it, wondering. It's addressed to someone who broke my heart. Who changed my future. And my past.

And I can't decide what to do with it.

"Do whatever you can't not do."  It's a whisper in my ear, from my better self.

Inside, there's a bank check and a folded note, written on printer paper.

And it's the note that bothers me most; that it could have been kinder. Could have been written by the better me.

But the pain of a re-written past is too great. And so is its twin, a divergent future. Birthed on the narratives of noble intent, they hide happiness like phantoms and ghosts that shadow the living.

Which is why the note is so devoid of kindness.

But to the thing that I can't not do.

I think about George.

In a scene from Back to the Future, I remember George McFly standing in the diner, bravely, notepad in hand and finally summoning the courage to ask Lorraine for a date.

"I'm George. George McFly," he said. "I'm your density. I mean, your destiny."

In that pity and humor, something can be found. In our density, we sometimes get it wrong. Maybe they're gawky or freckled, skinny or awkward. Perhaps like George. Or maybe so beautiful as to be fatally imperfect. That we can - and do - mistake our density for our destiny is evident everywhere.

And for those, like me, who dyslexically chose density, all is not lost. The universe seeks destiny too, and has unknowable power to force a cosmic do-over.  The process - a collision between the squandered soul and the universe - is not without pain. Everything must be shattered - the atoms of our illusions and dreams - into a million particles.

Once reconstituted, we have the chance to seek a new timeline. To be like George - or perhaps Lorraine, instead, to choose the better of the two.

I believe the universe of souls is like an unending and infinite ocean of poppies; each flower, each petal, a potential destiny.

We must walk among them, searching and believing.

Believing that we can find it. The right timeline. The right love. The right soul.

And as we do, perhaps we'll also discover that there is wonder and happiness to be found in the looking, in the searching. In our time spent among the deep, beautiful  shades of crimson and scarlet; among these flowers of souls.

And since that's where I want to spend my time, I pulled the note from the envelope and tossed it into the trash.