The title for this post is meant to convey that I had two revelations this week, just using the Bible chapter numeration style for fun. But just for shits and giggles, I also looked up the actual bible verse, and it turns out I like it: “I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false.” Sounds good to me.

From one week to the next, I never really know what to expect. The highs are really high, the lows are pretty low, dear Ghost. I like to think that the good times are largely outweighing the bad these days, but I never seem to see them coming. Every day is a game of roulette: what fresh hell or heaven awaits me today?

But as you well know, Ghost, I’m boring. Let’s talk about you for a minute. While on my run today, I think I discovered your identity at long last. Looking around the city in the overcast gloom that was this afternoon, I realized that your appearance in these missives coincided roughly with my awareness that I was moving to Portland. Then, as I was panting along the Tillikum Bridge about halfway through the run, I realized that Portland is a gray ghost. A gloomy ghost. A Ghost.

She’s you, my dear. She’s you.

My new city, my new circumstance, that’s who I’ve been talking with this whole time. Now that you have a face, I love you even more. Thank you for always listening to me (even when you roll your eyes). Thank you for always being there for me (even when my shenanigans cause you to raise an eyebrow). Thank you for being my conscience and my confidante. You are making this change so much better.

All right. Now peep these revelations:

I’ve been re-reading old posts, and let me tell you, Ghost, as a blogger with no followers, I’m allowed to post the most inane shit. No one reads it, so I can go nuts. The brilliance about reading through old posts is that sometimes I can pull inanity together into a coherent idea. An idea that makes some sense. An idea that might improve my life.

In past posts, I wrote the following two paragraphs:

#1: “If I’m going to be untethered, let me be so fully. I want to quit the job, run away for a year or so, use up all my savings and just camp wherever, do whatever, be somewhere whenever. I think humans aren’t meant to be so trapped in a workaday, COVID-ridden, politically divided, cruel and hostile world. We’re meant to get up in the morning and breathe and stretch. We’re meant to stare at the moon and stars in the sky for a while, or play idly with water in a stream. We’re meant to run pell-mell up a hill just for fun, or forage for food and make things, or talk with each other about ideas. We’re meant to touch one another, to hug our loved ones and cuddle with our superloves.”

#2: “As an anthropologist and an adoptee, I’m keenly aware of the importance of story to the continuity of cultural threads within a population. I’m aware of the need of descendants to feel ties to their ancestors, and the value of deep history to social groups. As a single person in the world without direct contact with blood relatives, I am no one’s daughter, sister, cousin. I am connected to other humans only at the Homo sapiens species level. I am also aware of the lack of legacy I will leave. When I die, no one will know my name or wonder who I was or want to hear what I learned, and this makes me feel a little sad. I wonder if other people who are alone feel similarly.”

Well, that sounds like the beginning of a book to me.

I mean hypothetically speaking, what would keep me from roaming around the country, asking various relevant parties about their adoption experiences? What would I hope to glean from such an adventure? Well, a whole hell of a lot of insight, for one thing. Scenery, for another. New running and biking spots, for a third.

I would structure the bones of the book like I would a research paper, with the aim of answering several questions. But I would write it like a novel. Perhaps the middle and ending chapters could involve me finally meeting my birth mother, brother, nephews, aunts. There are so many others I could meet, so many others I know who I could ask questions.

The focus would be on how to help other adoptees, young and old, tackle the questions that inevitably surface for them, and to document a journey that has taken my entire life to process. I want to explore what makes me different from those around me and what makes me uniquely me. I also want to delve a bit into how other cultures cope with children without family, orphans, and abandoned souls. And I want to examine how my life would have been different if no one had told me I was adopted.

There are oh, so many logistics involved. But now that the kernel of an idea has been planted, maybe I can run with it and see what I can do.