Drafty's Discovery | Dear Ryan

Have a question for Ryan? Write into Dear Ryan using the Contact Us form on our website or through his email: ryanm21@illinois.edu

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DEAR RYAN,

WHAT IS DAY LIKE? MOTHER TELLS ME I CAN NOT GO OUT DURING THE DAY. SHE SAYS I MUST STEY IN THE CAVE. SHE SAYS WE ARE BATS. BARS ONLY GO OT AT NIGHT SAYS MOHTER. RYAN IS THE MOON BIGER? DO THE STARS GET YELLOW OR BLUE? DO YOUR WINGS GROE. ARE THEIR LOST OF BUGS TO EAR? MOTHER TELLS ME THEY GO THE OTEHR WAY. IN CAVE WE ARE UPSIDE DOWN THEY GO OTHER WAY?

LOVE,
DRAFTY

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Dearest Drafty,

I am concentrating intensely on the questions you’ve trusted me to answer, and I now believe I hold the key to solving your distress regarding life outside the Cave. As someone who’s had the good fortune to travel at least like four-ish blocks (in all directions) from my own home, I’ve seen it all. And let me just tell you right off the bat: no one can ever really make heads or claws of the world. I recognize the subtle tremor beneath your words: that quiet, aching fear that there must be a single correct path, one shiny golden rainbow road the universe has laid out for you, and you fear flying to the left or the right because you might hit a tree or like a pole or a freakishly tall man.

You seem to imagine your bat life as something to solve, but I encourage you to consider it instead as something to taste, as something to observe, and most importantly as something to laugh at. The chilly sweetness of the season’s first virgin snow, the musical beeping of a grocery store checkout line, the thrill of reading the new Chambana Report issue hot off the printing press. Watching David throw darts into his wall, the faraway po-tweet po-tweet po-tweet of a distant bird, a warm hug from a warm friend, avoiding stepping on the crack between sidewalk tiles. All of these are moments of your life that are actually happening in real time. Not in the future, not once you’ve figured out all the answers, not once you’ve become the bat you think you’re supposed to be. Right Now. Let these words be the wind in your wings, and fly until you’ve found where the best bugs grow. And for your own sake, don’t let your bat of a mother tell you otherwise.

I leave you with a relevant and timely quote from a book I’ve been trying to get fellow CR writer Thomas Dickey to finish reading:

“Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenched out of an alley with some sort of Psst you can’t even hear because you’re in such a rush to or from something important you’ve tried to engineer.”

I also leave you with a piece of heartfelt poetry I’ve drafted up for this specific issue:

Some bugs are red,
Other bugs are blue
If bats can fly,
Maybe I can too.

Love,
Ryan

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