Ten Years’ Time

Two coincident happenings that have me thinking about ten years’ time.

The first is simply an ABBA song, one that I was barely aware of when it came out back in 1979, but came to know much later as one of the only “new year” songs out there. Casting about for a new year song to perform at open mic (that’s a thing I do now, dear readers), I found the chords for the simply titled “Happy New Year” and started singing it. The weightiest part of the song, the heaviest thought, is the line:

It’s the end of a decade   /   In another ten years time

Who can say what we’ll find  /   What lies waiting down the line   /   In the end of eighty-nine

In 10 years from when this song is set, it will be 1989 – or, to do the math, 33 years ago. Ugh. That just … weighs on me. I don’t even focus on the ’79-ness of it all, a year when I was a barely sentient 18-year-old doofus working on a college degree and a drinking problem. In ’89, I was a full-on adult with a longish career history, a graduate degree, years of sobriety, and an incredible future awaiting me. I would get to do and be things that would have been unimaginable – my whole future would open up in those next few years.

The other thing that set me to thinking about ten years’ time was a particular quote from Carlos Castaneda. A friend posted pictures of reunions of old Daily Orange staffers from way back when (and in 1979, I was a Daily Orange staffer, so there is a circle here). Those brought back thoughts of a quote that was – handwritten? typed? on a piece of foolscap and rubber-cemented to the wall in the copy editing room (we just called it “Copy”) in the shabby offices of the newspaper at 1101 E. Adams Street.

The quote was:

“Write, write. Or you’ll die. To die with elation is a crappy way of dying.”

– Don Juan

“Write, write. Or you’ll die” is easily understandable to me. That was never a mystery. It’s the bit about elation that confused me.

I knew at the time that it was a quote from Carlos Castaneda, someone whose being-quoted days may have passed their peak around that time, but this was the post-hippie era and Castaneda’s mysticism was still in the air. (For the unfamiliar, he wrote a series of books purporting to be about his experiences with a Yaqui shaman named don Juan Matus. Derided by those with actual knowledge of Yaqui culture, they gained favor with those seeking answers about the self and particularly by those who thought psychotropic drugs would unlock those answers.) However, I never had sufficient curiosity to figure out something that has gnawed at me since that time, which is: what is the context? What does that sentence mean? It was not a famous quote; drilling through lists of things Castaneda said in his books, that doesn’t appear. Its application to a group of college students who were and aspired to be writers was clear, but what was its application in the book? I never found out.

Until this week, when I went on a quest again, and found the line in an online version of his fourth book (validating my decision not to read through them to find it; I never would have), Tales of Power. It doesn’t turn out to be an important passage, or a particularly emphasized one. Mixed in with Don Juan’s thoughts about what it is to be a warrior and a concept of “personal power” as a key to using enlightenment, and that being happy or content was not the way. The full passage is this:

Don Juan’s comment was that I was indulging in being broad-minded and good.
“Watch out!” he said. “A warrior never lets his guard down. If you keep on being so happy you’re going to drain the little power you have left.”
“What should I do?” I asked.
“Be yourself,” he said. “Doubt everything. Be suspicious.”
“But I don’t like to be that way, don Juan.”
“It is not a matter of whether you like it or not. What matters is, what can you use as a shield? A warrior must use everything available to him to close his mortal gap once it opens. So, it’s of no importance that you really don’t like to be suspicious or ask questions. That’s your only shield
now.
“Write, write. Or you’ll die. To die with elation is a crappy way of dying.”

After decades, rather an unsatisfying explanation for a quote that has dogged me all this time, but I expected it would be.

But in looking for that, I chanced upon this, and it’s something with much more resonance:

There are lots of things that you do now which would have seemed insane to you ten years ago. Those things themselves did not change, but your idea of yourself changed; what was
impossible before is perfectly possible now and perhaps your total success in changing yourself is only a matter of time.

And that, of course, is stunningly true. Ten years, even five years. I am doing things now, including what I derisively refer to as “this nonsense” of playing piano and singing in public, that would have been unimaginable to me a decade ago. I had none of the tools to even do that. And yet, in a surprisingly short time, it became a thing I wanted to do (well, I always wanted to play piano, or some instrument), and I have done it. Sought help, sought encouragement, sought training – found them all, did the thing. Utterly inconceivable, and something I now do, often twice a week.

I call myself out on referring to it as “nonsense,” because in fact this little act of creation, this very temporary act of putting sounds out into the world, sounds from my fingers and my throat, is, when it connects, the source of the greatest peace I’ve ever felt. Not the only peace, but a peace on a par with that I have previously only found in movement, in paddling or cycling, hiking or skiing. Here is peace right within, and a connection to myself. When my voice hits right – and there is never any guarantee that it will – the feeling is incredible. Ten years ago, I could not have imagined it. Even five years ago. It was unthinkable. And here it is, being thought all the time.