Not a month after turning 21, I bookmarked the wikipedia page for “existential crisis.” I was comforted by its thoughtful suggestions:
“Turn on a light, preferably 75 watts or brighter.”
“Drink a cool glass of water.”
“Clean whatever room you’re in. This will help you clarify your power over the world and give you a few minutes to do some basic problem-solving.”
At the end of my junior year in college, my father arrived in Los Angeles. He had come to save me, to take me 3,000 miles away from my problems to the sanctuary of rural New Hampshire.
I picked him up at the airport and kept driving. I took him on an afternoon tour of Malibu. We came across a rugged white beach, bustling with pelicans, ducks, and seagulls. We skimmed shells out over the surf and watched the wind whip the water hard against the shore.
I felt that I had come to the end of my existence, and that the days ahead could only bring me backwards through time as I retraced my steps to the other side of the country, toward my beginnings in that big backyard on the eastern coast.
I pondered as I approached a pelican. He stood motionless, only his feathers ruffled by the wind. He regarded me with one unblinking eye as I came closer still, peering into the depths of his cornea, wondering whether he too felt the significance of this moment. My father came to stand beside me and we turned to the ocean once more, inhaling the wind-whipped salty air, skin prickling at its touch, both sensing that something momentous was soon to occur.
Behind us, two boisterous young boys raced into the midst of a flock of seagulls. The birds rose, circled, and sent agitated streams of diarrhea onto our heads.
We ate dinner at a Korean Barbecue. Then we returned to my apartment, where my father crawled onto an empty mattress and fell sound asleep. But I could not sleep in the empty green glow, and stayed up drinking wine in the kitchen.
The next morning, we went out and ate omelettes on a sun-baked patio. While we waited for the check, my father told me he had had a dream that I had drowned in the bathtub. He had tried to rescue me by pulling me out by my hair, but it was too late.
I was already dead.
And then we left L.A. It was sunny and congested but I felt the open world spreading before me. Things got lighter and lighter the farther we drove. We listened to Transcendental Meditation tapes and talked about mind expansion, and my father told me about his first time on LSD. I told him he was driving too slow, that we would never make it back to New Hampshire. He told me I was driving too fast, that I would put too much strain on the car. Somewhere in the Mojave Desert, the engine began making petulant noises, and that’s when we knew we were in for a long ride.
