For a few weeks now, I had been planning to return to writing. The dissertation is in the rearview, the student loans are not. I have a few moments before the next thing swallows me. Yesterday, I broke up the Bourbon Trail to a pay a visit to the grave of Thomas Merton. It is quiet and unassuming, set amongst a handful of crosses distinguished by a satin cloth and rosary, and a few flowers someone had left. I read something that said the Dalai Lama prayed here. The abbey is adjacent to a bald hill that breaks into a field where you can see several rural roads running in different directions. It strikes me that it's an odd place for a Trappist Monastery, but I suppose any place is an odd place for a Trappist Monastery.
So, it is here that one of the century's great writers lived as he composed works that have contributed enormously to the spiritual literature of our time. If you are unfamiliar with Merton there is a nice introductory profile in the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/thomas-merton-the-monk-who-became-a-prophet . Someone, sent that article to me once, mentioning that I reminded him of Merton. I'm not sure I know what he meant precisely, but I was enamored with the comparison. Merton has been described as deeply conflicted. I get that part. I'm at the gravesite of a monk, and I stopped here with a car full of artisan bourbon en route to Denver for a conference on psychedelic science.
I could never have predicted this career turn. I'm certain that people who knew me in my youth would not see much contradiction here. I remember at a reunion, fifth or tenth year, who knows, that I shared that I was a counselor now, and I worked with "kids with behavior problems." Dustin Palmer laughed out loud. Dustin used to drive me to the beer distributor every Friday of our senior year. It is things like this that catch me in a coffee shop in Kansas City. Details like; Sean, or Beave, or Chris instructed to hold any identification that affirmed my real name in case the distributor would not accept my fake ID and I would have to flee into the woods. Palmer was headed to the Air Force, we couldn't risk fuck ups.
The song on the coffee shop is Beirut. I can still remember the image of it playing when the woman I loved stood in the center of the room and stated "I like this," pleased with the playlist I put together for her birthday. These are the things that haunt me, the episodic memories, the cerebral clutter that is always just close enough to the surface when you have ADHD. It's like a feng shui that generates as much disappointment and hurt as joy. You never know what box you're getting into. It wasn't until my early 40's that I finally realized what is wrong with me. This was hard because so much had also gone so right with me, and that feels grossly unfair at times. I have a difficult time finding a worthy justification for how I arrive at this moment, having spent a giant portion of my life trying to throw it away.
It is Father's Day. I'm in a coffee shop in Kansas City, preparing to slather myself in barbecue as I head to Denver for a conference on the enormous psychotherapeutic potential of psychedelic medicine: https://www.wired.com/story/the-psychedelic-scientist-who-sends-brains-back-to-childhood I have no idea if I will ever get around to writing that book that I keep telling people about, but I joked the other day that it was some sort of merging of Fear and Loathing with the Seven Storey Mountain. Grandiosity remains intact.
Aaron calls to wish me a happy Father's Day. He's enamored with his flip phone. Allie wishes a happy Father's Day from the background. Aiden is in bed. One night ago, I slept in the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky. You'd be grandiose too.
