Free Maybe (Maybe Not) by Robert Fulghum Page A

business trip to Mexico. We went to the Plaza de Toros in Mexico City to see the bullfights. A wonderfully terrifying experience. And embarrassing. Experiencing in public the fear and blood and deathand the mad energy of the crowd was too close to images of terror and loathing I had concealed in my nightmares and fantasy. I cried.
    “This powerful experience has kept me attached to bullfighting over the years, though I have never again been to a live event. I’ve read many books, collected photographic essays, seen movies, and talked with afficionados and two professional matadors.
    “It is not that I like bullfighting as such. But it’s the clearest metaphor I have in my mind for dealing with the dark, dangerous demon of death that runs loose in the arena of my mind from time to time.
    “With experience and practice, one may increase the odds in favor of triumphing over the bull. I respect the bull. I know that even the best matadors come close to death. And sometimes—sometimes—the bull wins.
    “My bull is the beast of self-destruction. I know he’s in there, always.
    “But at age fifty-five, I am at the top of my form as a matador.
    “I’m confident in the presence of the bull.
    “This confidence is called
ver llegar
in the ring. It means ‘to watch them come.’ It is the ability to plant your feet exactly so—to hold your ground and see calmly, as in slow motion, the charge of the bull, knowing that you have what it takes to maneuver thebull safely by. This is dynamic stability. Standing still is one of the steps in dancing, as moments of silence are part of music. Confidence lies in the stillness. It is the confidence that comes from many passes and many fights—you can control the bull and defeat it because you have done it before.
    “My bull comes at me when I have succumbed to examining my life with a microscope. Little mites become dragons under the lens, and fear makes me weak. Or the bull comes when I am hurriedly trying to collect and carry all the baggage of my life and haul it up the spiral staircase that leads to nowhere, and I despair of the absurdity of my life. The bull comes then. Because he thinks I welcome him as a kind of solution.
    “I know him now. I can smell him, sense him before he moves. I welcome him. Yah, Toro, come on. I plant my feet and watch him come. He charges. I pass him safely by with a swing of the cape of my confidence. The crowd in my head roars. OLÉ! The crowd is made up of all those ancestors who passed their bulls—they are pulling for me. OLÉ! OLÉ! OLÉ!
    “There is always a silence when the bull is defeated.”
    “And in that silence, the bird in the window sings again?”
    “Yes.”

I n 1984 my wife and I shouldered our backpacks and set off on a five-month journey around the world. A dream come true. A wonder wander walkabout. The romantic anticipation came easy—the reality was often hard.
    Traveling is anxious work. So much time is absorbed in just coping with the unfamiliar—with language, currency, local customs and officials, accommodations, and food. The trouble with “Getting Away from It All” is that you indeed get away from it all—all those background comforts of home—as well as from the unconscious ease with familiar smells, sounds, and cultural patterns. Having all your mental systems on full alert for a long time is exhausting. One gets cranky. And two get even crankier.
    Our adventure fatigue was relieved by an elephant ride in Thailand.
    This came at the midpoint of our journey, when we were thinking, If we’re having such a wonderful time, why aren’t we having a wonderful time?
    An acquaintance arranged for us to visit a forest reserve north of Chiang Mai where elephants are still used for all the heavy work of logging. We were to view the operation from elephant back. A shaky ladder was tilted against the side of an elephant. We cautiously climbed up and onto an equally shaky wooden platform strapped to the elephant’s