Over the Crazy Cliff

When someone invites you to a party and tells you to bring a sleeping bag and "something you wrote," do you go?
I hardly say 'no' to anything, and the Better Offer Club (BOC) is still reviewing my membership application. That's how I found myself jumping on a seiner to spend the weekend in Halibut Cove, AK with a group of people I don't know as well as I'd like to.
And it seems this is how my life works best. Aught Ten has done nothing but take me by surprise and it has reminded me that travel, people, love, opportunities, and Cheez-Its are the things that make me feel like the world actually is spinning and that rumor is not just heretic science.
Anna, who claims to write for this blog, but in the last year has only posted a video of obnoxious birds, is taking her show on the road. I'll tell you, since she won't, that in 13 days, she's dropping her Chicago lease, throwing stuff in storage and seeing where life can take her if she occasionally borrows her parents car.
People our age are supposed to think this is irresponsible. I think its awesome...because not knowing where you will end up, but going anyway is a combination of adrenaline and faith that other people seek in skydiving, illicit drugs, or living out of cell phone coverage.
Sometimes, as I look down over the illustrative cliff where I have tossed money, future or relationships, I wonder if anything is going to bounce back up. It seems like operating without a net, but its not. It's just having a different definition of what that net is woven of. For Anna, it's knowing that as long as she has access to TV or a computer, she'll be able to watch Lost.
For me, I know that every place I end up, if I am looking and listening, there will be someone there to invite me to be a part of their tradition, once or forever. And that tradition will become part of who I am, and I'll shake my head every time I think that I almost said 'no' to that invite. This weekend that meant I put a sleeping bag in my pack, found something I'd written down, and listened to the prose of 7 friends. The weather was perfect and the mission was straightforward: hike, cook, laugh, drink, dance, and do something that people our age truly think is irresponsible: share our attempts at creativity. Outloud.