Adventures in Existence

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Adventures in Existence

Existence itself is an adventure even if one just merely exists, but there is much more adventure to be found within existence by living it to its fullest.

Some are from one’s current existence and some are from one’s many other lives through time and throughout the universe. Readers should be able to tell the difference.

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On Adventure

Boredom and dull routine have little place, if any, in a life, and it is only by one’s own laziness that they are allowed to exist at all, languishing nearby on the doorstep, as it were, as uninvited guests, as all the while terrible complaints are hurled against them.

‘I’m bored’, some say, halfheartedly hoping that some new entertainment will appear out of the blue and carry them away from a dreary commonplace existence, perhaps into a fairy tale. So, adventure calls constantly to us as a cure for the blahs, for routine dulls the senses—even the greatest music soon begins to fall unheard on our ears, and gradually degenerates into that same old song.

Although breaking the chains of routine often requires a great burst of energy, adventure can become self-sustaining once the seeds have been planted. Yes, initially, some hard work must be applied, since adventuring is not normal, free, and easy in this world, but, remember, that before all realized realities must come the dream, the creative vision, the attitude and the outlook that will bring adventure into one’s life.

Even before the dream comes the yearning, though it’s dim at first, glowing as a faint phantasm in a fleeting daydream struggling to maintain its shape before it fades into the noise of day. As these shadows pass over the adventurous mind, the vision must be enhanced and then steadily pursued until it, at last, becomes three-dimensional and real. We often look back later, quite amazed at the wonders that we have wrought, but—we had the vision and gave it life.

Daydreams are filled with thoughts on promenade: Wishes, fantasies o’er the mind cascade. Listen well to these plans already made, for by sundown the phantom shapes may fade.

The rewards of adventure are many; stimulation, experience, and growth are practical results, but foremost comes joy, exhilaration, and thrill—the feeling of being alive. Who has not known the adventure of walking to school alongside a stream, dallying here and there, then crossing over the water on a log, nearly slipping off, but catching one’s self at the last instant while skipping a heartbeat? Who has not known the electricity of the first kiss at summer camp? Or of the reading or writing of a great poem or story while basking warm and cozy in the winter sunshine? Or the thrill of a job well done? If we no longer know such things, then, perhaps, now is the time to stop worrying about getting our hair messed up.

It’s all a matter of style, purpose, and vision. To plant the seeds of adventure one must seek out the uncommon, the unusual situation, the exotic, even in one’s own backyard, looking for the odd character, although certainly not those who are unhealthy, the pleasantly eccentric (by today’s staid standards), the person willing to try just about anything that isn’t illegal, the offbeat but upbeat person, the optimist, the exciting prospect, the person with those excitingly wonderful qualities.

And so it is that once you find it, adventure begets more adventure, for, ideas from all over soon begin to interact and build until a person rises above mere existence and really lives! Oh, there can be dreams of far-off adventures, from romance in the south seas to mysterious intrigue in the villages of France, but travel and romance are only a general means to adventure—there are many more, mostly personal, for it depends on what you want from life. Adventure can be had right here in one’s own town.

Of course, some adventures entail a minor amount of risk-taking and rule breaking, for that which is often uncommon is often the most extraordinary and therefore must draw undue attention from those in the straight world, but, I ask you, does not the element of danger often greatly heighten the excitement? Who has not, in the throes of spring fever, slyly disappeared from his place of employment on some exciting romantic mission, and found adventure in that ‘forbidden’ quest?

Yes, adventure is lived in that delightful middle state in which one is neither drunk nor sober—nor ever reckless, but ever balancing excitement with responsibility, each paying for the other as we walk the thin line between foolishness and safety—the log across the creek.

So, I say, to you all, prime the pump; seek out adventure, embrace it. Use your emotions, get up out of your chair and into the arena; open up and invite adventure in, give it, take it; live life with a reasonable passion and with a passionate reason; for adventure will become a living situation that becomes automatic! Then you will say ‘I’m excited, there’s everything to do in this town, the people are mostly wonderful, and I marvel at life’s wonders each and every day!’

— (Another essay, from when high school began again in the fall)
(The 'Love' essay already appeared in another thread)

P.S. So it was that I took her with me on my part-time job of delivering kegs of nuts and bolts around Chicago and even to the far flung suburbs, but that’s another story for a far off day.)

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From the Existence Gallery

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The DesPlaines River had taken us through a gigantic cemetery that served all the outlying areas and some of Chicago, too, and then through a golf course and a large forest preserve. The cemetery was ever where the ducks were fed, where we lovers feasted on wine, verse, and bread amidst the flowered trees and quiet streams—the home for both the living and the dead.

Although there are many good tales from here, there were good emotions and thoughts from many places and so I shall combine them all in relating how wonderful it is to be alive on this Earth, including that one day we took 12th street (Roosevelt Road), which was once called ‘The Lincoln Highway’, all the way out to Galena and then to the Mississippi River, and crossed it, into Iowa.

We were in ‘Driftless’, meaning the place where the glacial drift hadn’t reached, and it was full of caves, gorges, and deeply carved rivers.

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Adventures in learning…

In freshman High school biology class, a revised textbook that was so new it was paperback-bound had told us how natural selection explained the mysteries of evolution, and of the variety of life covering creation, which continuum extended from animals to us. It seems that ‘we’ were once a lucky shrew, at first nervous and darting all about—until the dinosaurs separated, and then we mammals attached to a favorable evolutionary line in which every single one of our forbears on both sides was attractive enough to locate a loving mate, as had we now each other, being born in a civilized time, and now free to roam in a democratic country.

Yes, asteroids or some virus had swept away most of the species millions of years ago, but later on, two monkey chromosomes had fused, leaving chimps behind, DNA/RNA ever remembering all the survivors. Good fortune had smiled on Homo Sapiens.

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Of what stars did we shine of their stead? Across what ink black river did we have to swim? To what ends at length did we search for food? In what deep entangled forest were we bred? All this and more we talked about and relived during our travels.

William Smith had noted a correlation in fossils in rocks to find the relative rock ages that were possible. At every change in rock strata, certain fossils vanished, while in others they carried on into subsequent levels. What a glorious history we stood upon.

There was also the matter of the ancient Library of Alexandria…

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When we’d met, many months ago, the music of the spring had been in the breeze, a prelude borne by airy musicians of the trees—the mating calls of the birds, those that had opened for the cosmic symphony. And mighty Zeus, was there, full to the brim with the jollity of the fat man's belly. By Jove, came Saturnus, so very gray with age—lumbering into the party. That spring, the sun had filed the waking and breathing world with the fire of her imagination. Fresh winds made love to the blossoms of May, as the spring flowers reached for the light of day. Drinking deep droughts of life’s sunny delight, the fields had burst with the joy of love’s bouquet.

Spring had kissed the earth, leaving flowers there, like those whose perfume first scented virgin air, as again, the fragrant glen, in Heaven’s prayer, had hailed Earth’s anniversary with flowers fair. And now summer was leading to autumn. In a month, the chrysanthemums would drink the mellow day as the falling petals carried the light away. The autumn fog would enswirl, and that mist would upcurl. Into nothingness of winter the wisp would slowly unfurl.

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Spring to Autumn

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A short detour, then onto an amazing mystery continuing from the old 1927 classroom.


“Today we will work on incomplete thinking,” said the instructor.

“Suppose you go to an assassin’s house to wait for him to return so you can do him in, but you are running late and can’t find a parking spot, so you park in front of a fire hydrant. Then what?”

“Hope for the best?” one student responded.

“That could turn out for the worse,” replied the instructor, “for it will look odd, and the target will note it, plus he may even feel the hood and find that the engine is still warm. Besides, your car is not one that is of the neighborhood. The assassin may then even sneak up on your associate who is watching the house from the outside while you are in it and take him out. All this from bad parking.”

“Park far away and walk?” asked another student. “even though we were late?”

“Now you’re getting it. And don’t be late.”

“Ah, yes.”

“And don’t wait at their house; it could have sensors or be booby-trapped.”

“OK.”

“Good, now, another quandary. Suppose you and your associates are protecting someone from attack in a hotel room. How do you deploy?”

“We would have people in the room, plus in the two adjacent rooms and also those across the hall.”

“That’s all?”

“That should be enough.”

“You have become a victim of incomplete thinking, “answered the instructor.”

“We’d also have people outside and in the building across the street in case they were going to shoot through the window.”

“That’s good, but is that all?”

“Should be.”

“The thinking is still incomplete, for it is only two dimensional.”

“How so?”

“The attackers could rent a room beneath or above and shoot through the floor or the ceiling.”

“Uh, oh.”

“Yes, and what would be even better, as a fourth dimensional answer?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have the person just be a decoy, keeping the actual person to be protected somewhere else. Then you can capture the attackers without any other worries.”

“Wow, these are tough.”

“True, so here’s an easy one. What is the first in this sentence?”

“W?”

“Yes.”

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Previously…

Our High School was a massive four story building, it serving for both Oak Park and River Forest. No wonder I had hardly seen Cheryl there before, but now she was ever-present as a glowing spark.

There was a large and long tunnel going down some steps and underground over to the Field-house for physical education, so that the students could avoid the weather, and eagle-eyed Cheryl had noted an unused door on the school side, just to the left of where the tunnel steps began.

The room looked to be small, but we couldn’t really see into it through the frosted glass on its door. We went around outside to its shade-drawn window, seeing not very much but noting some outlines of desks through a tiny hole in the shade. Perhaps most of the classroom had been sacrificed to the creation of the tunnel entrance, yet about a third of it seemed to remain intact.

We kept an eye on it for weeks but no one ever opened its locked door, not even janitors during, before, or after school. This we knew all the more since we had put a thread across the door at its frame, up above, it having not been disturbed. Ah, it and its door had become long forgotten, its door even sitting there in plain sight, but not even having a number on it or above it. The door looked ancient, it no longer matching those of the other classrooms. A new secret place?

We each had an honor study hall during the same period, which meant that we didn’t have to be in it, and so we could be in the halls after the bell rang, presumably on the way to the library or the labs.

The old door latch of the neglected room easily succumbed to the old technology of being undone by a thin piece of metal. We could get in unseen, but how could we get back out unobserved? The ambient light coming through the window shade was enough to show the severed room in its remainder to be still in the state as it had been left in its use very long ago. We quickly shut the door, going off to the library to figure out our next move.

We decided that it would be best to try to exit the room when the hallway was crowded, rather than when classes were in session, thus not risking a hall monitor walking by and chancing upon us. We went in for a real good look the next day.

It was an educational tomb, covered with dust, and was much more interesting than Peabody’s. Shock! A calendar left hanging on the wall said that the year 1927. The wastebasket full of crumpled sheets of paper had not even been emptied, and all of the dust was unmarked. There was writing on the blackboard—the news of the 20s. A shelf contained old books, some of which were probably valuable, so we made a list of them for Cheryl’s mother to analyze some day.

I can’t say anything else, however amazing it would be, for I promised to keep it a secret. It is so astounding that you wouldn’t believe it anyway.


There was also a shelf with some old rocks and bones, and we had found this in the wastebasket of the old classroom of 1927.

This part was typed:

Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, is also the patron saint of arsonists. As Christianity slowly strangled the life out of classical culture in the fourth century it became more and more difficult to be a pagan. There stood in Alexandria the great temple of Serapis called the Serapeum and attached to it was the Great Library of Alexandria where all the wisdom of the ancients was preserved. Now Theophilus knew that as long as this knowledge existed people would be less inclined to believe the bible so he set about destroying the pagan temples. But the Serapeum was a huge structure, high on a mound and beyond the abilities of the raging Christian fanatics to assault.

Faced with this edifice, the Patriarch sent word to Rome. There the Emperor Theodosius the Great, who had ordered that paganism be annihilated, gave his permission for the destruction of the Serapeum. Realising they had no chance, the priests and priestesses fled their temple and the mob moved in. The vast structure was razed to it foundations and the scrolls from the library were burnt in huge pyres in the streets of Alexandria.

And this part was handwritten:

However, this was foreseen by the curator, and a good portion of the books and art were secreted out of Egypt, and even out of the known world in 391 A.D.

!

…

58 days… treasure safely stashed… 7 hills… Big river… barbarians appeared… all soldiers lost… all ships but one burned… escape… storms… repairs on sandy shores with dwarf pines… driven northward… cold… frozen… the end is near…

He had traced a coin onto paper by rubbing a pencil on it. The coin itself was gone.