New York, New York—

I’ve been reading voraciously while sitting in subways in New York for the past two months. I’m halfway through “The Wise Man’s Fear”, the second book in the “Kingkiller Chronicles”, having blazed through the first – “The Name of the Wind” in less than a week. It’s a hefty book, and I’m grateful to not have to carry my computer around: the mere thought of lugging around a backpack with a computer, a heavy book and the myriad sundries I invariably throw in to “use” the space sends trickles of sticky, uncomfortable sweat down my spine. The book has some rough edges, some holes in the veil where it’s awkwardly easy to see the scaffolding of the literary devices – I blame this sudden and equally blessed and maligned insight on Mario Varga’s Llosa’s “letters to a young novelist” – and it has moments where the archetype of the destined-to-glory meritocrat, as championed in the unselfconscious circles of the american technocracy, make one involuntarily snicker; but because of its goal as a more than usually literate approach to fantasy, it brings itself to articulate with pristine clarity many insights of the life of a young, awkward intellectual: the romantic relationship with music, the complete ignorance of – and fear-based approach to – the opposite sex (I woefully admit Kvothe’s boneheaded relationship with Deena hits so painfully close to home on my own romantic history that I feel anger towards him quite often), and, what caught my eye, an undercurrent of Zen present in the teachings of Elodin, the Master Namer, and Tempi, the ultra-civilized Adem mercenary. They both speak of the ineffable, of the way of things, of getting to know the whispers of the universe and going with its flow in a way that paradoxically marries mastery with submission, and I think to myself what my own Lethani is.

I’m here, in the city with which I’ve had a long yearning liaison, finally realistically close to being able to move in, sharing a house with the woman I love, about to finally be allowed to take a job, happily reading, making music, thinking about writing and with all the world to my reach. I’ve submitted to the Lethani that brought me here, leaving home knowing I may never come back in the same status as I left it, with a knot of regret, longing, sadness, optimism, apprehension, detachment and determination made tight and buried deep inside me; and even though it all feels like it’s falling into place, a long swing back of a pendulum long put in motion; I could say I dread the moment in which it swings back, taking it all away, but I’ve been so used to not having stability and adapting to change that I know change is the only thing that is permanent: what I dread is not having enough time to enjoy it, and I realize my dread is self-fulfilling, a feedback loop.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve joined a little band a client of mine put together and I’ve found that I have a decent – though not perfect – knack for music, and have found that the best way to hone musical skills is to play with others: you learn to have organic rhythm, an ear for what others play, a sense of what’s appropriate to add or remove when playing a particular piece, and the challenge of having to decide how to voice chords or build bass lines over a progression. All my idle study of theory feels like molasses in comparison to the fast improvement I’ve felt playing with these musicians. I’ve even learned how to play some bass to fill in for a bass player who left the band, and have found great joy in the particular challenges of such an instrument: it’s a world apart from the guitar, it creates a harmonic foundation that is expected to bridge the pure rhythm of the drums with the melodical aspects in the guitars and vocals, and one can’t easily get away with just learning a tab if the musicians in one’s particular band decide to sing, strum or drum in a different manner than the recording. The lethani of music is evident: it’s the synergy of the musicians, the search for each piece’s true light.

And then there’s writing. Some days I feel the pain of a topic swell in my chest, a topic I let die, fighting against the urge to put to words an experience that binds me to life and makes me either a stranger to it or a knowing part of a greater whole of humanity. I dither between writing these little essays with little use to anyone else but myself, and taking Varga’s Llosa’s stance and being able to source my personal experience to create persuasive fiction that can immerse the reader into living a life that faces the with distilled insights of existence. I persist in my cicada existence, hiding in waiting, but I also fear I may wither before “the right time” presents itself.

I have found a Lethani here, but I also have found myself wayless in many other respects.