Edward Ruscha: Crackers [How to Derive the Maximum Enjoyment from Crackers] (1969)

"My incarceration was also an Escape …"

Being Exiled felt like an assault, an insult to my dignity and reputation. It was also a great gift that I couldn't, for the life of me, perceive at first, for every life is a mix of liberation and sentence. As liberation, it overflows with freedoms. As a sentence, it severely restricts movement. One must always be here rather than there, no matter how one might wish to be there instead. Perhaps a week away on what passes for vacation must serve as the only possibility for distraction. Most of the time, one must contend with the intended and unintended consequences of being themselves. No place seems all that glamorous that sees the same face waking up every morning. Variety might be the spice of life, but most lives are explicitly constructed to inhibit too much variety. They generally promote even more of even more of the same.

So, being Exiled served as an Escape from those patterns. Imagine being offered the opportunity to leave everything behind: all the annoying and endearing elements of your current life- everything. In trade, you'd be forced to adapt to unknown conditions in unimaginable locations. You'd be divorced from family and friends, immediate spouse, and pets excepted. You'd be plunked down in some blank slate of a place where you knew absolutely nobody. You'd be forced to rediscover what you'd long before resolved for yourself. You'd be starting over from close to ground zero. Please tell me this offer doesn't carry at least a little allure.

Who would you become if forced to become yourself in some radically different context? Nobody could ever answer that question. The Great Improbability Generator will kick into action there, and you'll discover a different self than you'd previously imagined. So much of who we become comes from our interactions with our context. The same person might become quite different after rubbing shoulders with an alternate situation. I'm picky today about staying close to our little Eden near the end of the Oregon Trail because I've seen what happens when I stray too far away. I'm rightly satisfied with who I've become and no longer pine after becoming anybody different. But imagine for a minute if you weren't so satisfied. How much would you cry if circumstances forced you to experience a cataclysmic divorce from house and home?

Long ago, a mentor of mine, who'd survived Hodgkin's Lymphoma, gave me a book with the unlikely title of Cancer Is The Solution. In it, the author explained how his cancer had opened up avenues of exploration and discovery that had ultimately transformed his existence. He had, before his cancer, lived in what he would later describe as a form of blissful ignorance, perfectly satisfied and apparently successful. His cancer had awakened him from his complacency and essentially radicalized him in favor of living life. His cancer had rendered him an activist, authoring a book he never could have attempted before his life might have ended. I thought the book was a bit overblown, with most of its impact contained in its alluringly contradictory title. I thought the work might be experienced differently by somebody whose treatment hadn't been as successful as the author's.

In that same sense, for me, Being Exiled offered an Escape. The six months before the Exile began had seen The Muse and my world collapsing. That was late 2008, the last gasping of the horrendously unsuccessful George W. Bush administration. The (Not Really THAT Great) Recession happened. My father died after a summer-long illness where I took the overnight shift, watching him drift away. The Muse and I had declared bankruptcy, first our business, then personally. We were in danger of losing our home. I helped clear out my childhood home after my mother's primary care provider died, and she begrudgingly moved into assisted living. The only hope came when Obama was elected President and, later, when The Muse was offered that job in DC. We were more than ready to use our ejection seat by then.

Better fortune began when we agreed to leave. It seemed decidedly counter-intuitive that being Exiled might hold resolutions to our biggest problems, but it came as almost a welcomed vacation from them. The Villa's mortgage holder lost our records in the crash and was unable to bill us for those first six months of our Exile. The Muse found someone who would pay a deposit on an option to buy The Villa at a later date when they could afford it and rent it until then, even signing a lease that ensured the mortgage would be serviced in the meantime. We became solvent enough to pay the first and last months' rent partly because it took us months to find any suitable place. While all this happened, we were safely ensconced in a remote location far removed from the epicenter of our complications. We witnessed our downfall long distance before witnessing our surprise resurrection from there, too.

It might seem a sin to suggest this, but being Exiled turned out to be a dandy solution. I could go about discovering a replacement existence beyond the daily influence of my disintegrating prior one. This seemed unfair. There I was, delighting in my discoveries while many doubtless believed I'd been sent to Gitmo for my sins. There was, indeed, life during Exile, and I chose to take advantage of the life that Gitmo offered. I began attending a seminar offered by an old friend at George Washington University. I'd often wander over to The Kennedy Center for their daily free concert. The Muse and I would take long walks around The Mall, only occasionally entering any of the free museums. The National Gallery of Art, as did The Library of Congress, became a frequent destination. I became a local far away. I sometimes managed to enjoy myself while living out my sentence. My incarceration was also an Escape; my Exile also served as a dandy solution.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz