Imaginary Parallels

"Three of the most significant imaginary lines running across the surface of the earth are the equator, the Tropic of Cancer, and the Tropic of Capricorn"

I have been back from Ecuador for 2 months now, which marks 9 months since my "dramatic adventure" began. In that time, I have crossed lines that divide countries, climates, and personal thresholds--all of which are technically imaginary but have changed me so significantly over this time that I must believe they are real in a way beyond what can be mapped or expressed.

I was a kind of virgin when i began this journey-- a mere fragment of an infinite pilgrimage in which my entire life is but a fragment-- I was timid and hesitant to follow impulse, to follow the spark of instantaneous knowing. I immediately knew DAT was a significant parallel. It was love at first sight. But not to the rational, protective people in my life: they cautioned me against this kind of love. "It isn't real," some would say, "You shouldn't have to raise money to act." But for me, money wasn't part of the equation: experience was. Giving, courageous freedom, and magnetic law were too. I have made rational choices in my life that turned out to be more imaginary--more based on hypothesis than the solid foundaton of instinctual knowing. That is, I have engaged in relationships and projects whose value eventually dissolved because we shared no common denominator, no creative potential; we never added up to a greater reality, relationship, or integer. Our truth was as imaginary as zero. And so, logic told me that the sensual "imaginary" love that I was so cautioned against was just as worthy of surrender and exploration as the sensible failures. Besides, instinct felt true--perhaps more substantial than traditional processes of problem-solving. My choices might not create a linear path; they might even spiral me back to the beginning, but where is the beginning exactly? Zero might be the kind of love worth living for, so I looked at a map of my heart and erased a few of the international borders.

When I realized these lines were imaginary, I realized so were the rules. I don't have to erase--I need to draw, write, create. My choices are a complex proof that is the root of my rootless life--one long line of a million Emersonian "zig-zags," which straightens only at a distance. My route is the only one I follow--but I pay attention to those whose paths I merge with and intersect. They are part of my road-trip too. And so I hitched a ride with DAT and we made love. I learned to fundraise, organize, and rally people for a cause: for art, for drama, and for adventure! We got excited and we got sick. We vomited and swam with sharks. We shelled delicate pods to collect the tiny seeds of native island trees--even if it meant only one we planted would survive into adulthood. We drudged up buckets of swamp water to build a community center that may never be used. I took a rusty nail in the leg for love and loved it. But these experiences dissolve on the Big Chart of which my entire life is a dot. But I saw my own potential in this union, in a blind leap of faith into love and adventure. I guessed and checked. And the answer was better than I imagined.

I realized that of the many friends and family and strangers part of my trajectory, some eventually converge again in place (y) and time (x). No matter how parallel Cancers and Capricorns may seem, everyone comes and goes in his or her unruly way. . . some keep going, and some come again. Some never come. And I can't even imagine who they are. It's too bittersweet. There are too many wonderful affairs to be found in this world and in this lifetime--too many whys to cross my axes. I am too small and weak to contain the people who have shared their space and time with me in these 9 months, nevermind those who share the greater graph, never mind those who helped create the giant new life inside me. I feel pregnant with the world, with love, with the desire for more, and yet I am content with and inspired by what I have. It's real--I feel it kicking ... like Ecuadorian futbol cheers.

I did not expect the affair with DAT to last so long, but I have grown exponentially as a result of that first impulse--of that seemingly brief encounter. I still have dreams and passions; they are the invisible (not imaginary) answers that catalyze my impulses. This close the dots may not make sense, but they are the only logic I follow. I connect the impulses to make my map. They are as steep and jagged and rich as the ridges of the Andes. Beneath the belt of the Earth is a force that pulses in my fingertips, shaking the "line" I draw. In South America or North, I am connected to it's invisible drum. Something is born in August, a new inspiration, a new perspective, a door to more impulses, lines, and nonsensical numerical combinations.

Every so many months, I step back into space and look at the picture; I try to calculate my route in miles and make sense of my story with words, and it does not seem real. My great saunter has led me to meet and diverge from other people's paths. They are experiences I desire to hoard but am happy to release. Beauty is too infinite for our frames to contain. Joy and pain are what life feels like confined behind the border that divides our bodies from infinite atmosphere. They are what it feels like to look across the imaginary canyon and touch the vast uncharted land on the other side. Like moving between countries, perhaps it's merely a technical difference: no three-hour queue to gain permission to cross, no cool tortoise stamp, no sapling seed to put in my invisible passport. Perhaps crossing the line is simply a matter of temperature change. Or perhaps crossing. Perhaps the border merely marks the entrance to tropical Paradise, where summer is as endless as this one... but I am not quite ready to find out yet. For now I am too happy at the edge, where the hot and cold of the sea and the mountains remind me I am lucky to be making a map at all, that I am capable of having hypothetical babies.

None of our lives is straight. I cannot believe the Equator--imaginary as it is-- is a flatline. I am not even sure that it is parallel. We are a grid of seismographs that sometimes ever so briefly align. It's a baby that screams and cries and unabashedly poops and cooes and scratches. And the etch-a-sketch, the passport is perfect. Would you like to see mine? Stamp it together for a while? May I see yours before the world moves us again?