Warp & Woof

When I was a child, I wanted to be a dancer, an artist, a cartoonist, a photographer, an architect, a musician, a writer. I'm a creative person. I don't produce enough for those that judge to approve of me calling myself such, but all titles aside, creative is what I am.

However, I'm also extremely self-critical. For years, that's derailed most of my creative attempts. Part of the issue is that creative though I may be, in my own self-conception, I see myself as a copyist, not a creator in my own right. I see what others create and a part of me wants to reproduce that. A sense of discipline, of mastery of style and form, someone who can replicate perfectly someone else's dance or brushwork or words.

Perhaps in that, I strive to unmake myself and be recast in someone else's form. Perhaps I cannot view perfection and myself as occupying the same space, so I remake myself in the image of another, perfected creator, in the hopes of allowing space for perfection myself by showing self the door. I want to give up this me, this flawed me and reach for, grow into what I see in others, what I see as my own ideal. Eliminate my broken me, to replace it with my perfected me.

The problem, the self-critical crux, is that I am a terrible copyist. I have never got anything I've striven to create to look, to sound, to feel how I want it to. No matter how much I train, what I produce does not jibe with what I picture. And I lament that. For years, I've stepped away from the pen, the keyboard, the dance floor out of despondency. For long stretches I've struggled with, or been smothered by the sense that my desire for creative self-actualization is perpetually doomed to failure. There is a concept of the beauty of imperfection, called wabi-sabi. My copyist aspirations have no room for such stuff, unless I'm copying it from someone else.

So I riffle through the gardens others have planted for treasure. And if in finding and cherishing an object, a stone perhaps, I take it back to put it in my sacred pool, its appearance is distorted, it seems translocated. Water bends the light and changes the visual form of anything put inside it.

But that idea of this idealized future self blots out the self that already exists. And it's not self. It's a motley piecemeal of other people's performances. I may pretend it's self-aspiration, but I can't delude myself into thinking it's an accurate self-conceptualization, or a realistic self-actualization.

The sacred stone isn't my own. I take it from someone else's garden to put in my pool. So, why should it appear as I want it to, if what I want is for it to be as it was in someone else's yard? Over the last year, I've done a great deal to shrug off my self-criticism. But it's a hydra and self-affirming is full-time work. When I feel I've begun to make progress, I find that cyst of recrimination nested away somewhere new, using different rhetoric. I'm not down in the pit of self-hate. Not anymore, at least. But there's a long road ahead of me.

And new hurdles arise regularly. There is a wonderful dancer in town here, that I've said half-jokingly, “I want to be her when I grow up.” Not dance as well as she does. But dance exactly as she does. My dance does not look as I want it to. It's bent. My poetry is warped. My prose is distorted. My drawing is squashed—inasmuch as I want them to be like the paradigms I borrowed or stole from elsewhere.

And if they are bent, that begs a number of questions. What bends the “ideal” image into what it comes out as? What medium in this example is the water of the metaphor? Isn't it me that is the water? And not just water, but the sacred pool. So, the thing that prevents me from attaining my external ideal is my internal reality. I am that which prevents me from being other than me. The stone thrust into the water is an external thing. But I am the water. The stone may be lovely, but the lens that distorts where I want to see it and how I want it to appear—that lens is me. The distortion is the road map of the self.

Dark matter warps the paths of celestial bodies—in my own equation of orbits, I am the dark matter that pulls my ideals out of the perfect circles I envision them spinning in, into the parabolic wabi-sabi of me. Not my ideal me. My real me.

And so, it dawns on me that perhaps I am not failing at all. Perhaps the only way I yet falter is that I have not yet learned how to properly celebrate the way the field of my own gravity distorts external shapes into being an expression of what I am inside, perfected, being perfected, or otherwise. I bend that which I love. And the dent is me. Exactly as I should be.

After the End: Yggdrasil

I finally managed to begin getting through to and integrating the six-year old part of myself after ten years of some of the darkest, worst struggle of my life. How am I supposed to squeeze that kind of struggle and change into the next few hours?

And the truth is, I can't. It will take the time it takes. I will succeed on my own terms, in my own time and there is no fast forward button. A life is lived out over the course of a lifetime.

So, this wonderful woman will have to be wonderful just a bit more and make room for me falling to pieces as my internal Ragnarok knocks my foundations out from under me. But then, I don't suppose there's any other time Ragnarok can be expected to arrive.

She's the perfect chaos, the beautiful upheaval of love that makes me feel so safe my demons storm down from my mountaintops and knock everything down. Looking inside I understood, I choose her over stable stasis. And I realized, that's the point. With her, and with that ten year old in me. Kids, pets, friends, lovers, spouses—they make one's life messy. Your cats destroy your sofas, your dogs destroy your carpets, your kids destroy every material object you have and even the least friend brings a mess into an otherwise orderly little life.

And so, yes, the ten year old is Loki, is Fenris, and is Ragnarok. But after Ragnarok, Baldr and his brother return from Hel and the spring follows winter. Love is giving those you love the power to destroy parts of your life, with the confidence and faith that you both can rebuild whatever is shaken to ground.

So, I know the ten year old needs an opponent. Someone to face off against, and hold the line against him. Someone who will oppose without being an enemy. He needs a father. He needs me to stand up. And the little wolf being what he is, he needs me to finally embrace that wolf energy inside and stand in front of him, on four legs, head down, shoulders up.

On the day all this started to fall into place, I rode my bike across town. Twice I saw prairie dogs. Close at hand, not fleeing, which is uncommon. Regarding me as I passed within two feet of them. They were burrowing under a new bike path, the one I was riding on. They'd hollowed out underneath the path enough that the concrete had begun to collapse, so that their burrows peeked out from rubble. They'd destroyed a paved road. They suddenly seemed like that ten year old in me, not strictly the squirrel he'd wanted to be when younger, but close. Prairie dog and squirrel—not the same, but ringing the same bell inside me. And being a force for Ragnarok as he was, he was also the squirrel Ratatoskr slowly destroying the world tree, which would herald the coming apocalypse. And that nevertheless, he was joy and triumph, embodied. That one thing could be both.

Because the forces of life are the forces of death. Autumn leaves and the winter's Ragnarok unmakes the whole of nature's bounty, until Baldr returns to herald the spring.

And I knew then, I could rebuild. And welcome the uncertainty of the coming winter, when all my best laid plans will crumble. Even, perhaps, my own Yggdrasil, the very center of my own world. I might lose my center, entirely. But so be it.

S, I very much hope you're still with me at that point—I'd like very much to plant a new world tree with you.

After the End: Time Travel

It occurred to me, just last week actually, that finally, ten years on, I'd managed to figure out what “I want to go home” meant and how to go about giving it to myself. The boy wanted out of the hallway, had wanted to be invited into the light in the center of my life again, the living room. And I'd told him that was his right forever. Integration had finally begun.

In April, I met an amazing woman. I've tried to put in words how I feel about her, describe here or sitting with others what she means to me. And I can't do it. She inspires me, certainly. She makes me feel like striving as hard as I can, and settling in, snug and safe, both at once. And I can describe why, maybe, but it wouldn't capture it, so I've lapsed into silence around it, outwardly, for the most part. What's to say?

Last year, I turned my depression around and finally clawed out of that despair that haunted much of my life. But in doing so, I didn't reach for success. I redefined what I was doing AS success. Not having a job was success. Not having a car was success. Because I couldn't manage trying to reach for them, and the only way I was going to feel good was by celebrating what I had accomplished, with no anxiety over what I was externally expected to accomplish, but had failed to achieve. Life is full of what you haven't managed to do yet. Life's fuller still of what you'll never manage. Why bother with that stuff? Better to celebrate what you are doing, here and now, that brings you joy and real, visceral contentment.

And that was me enlisting the ten year old me to assist. By undermining the expectations of success, I was on his side. And with us on the same side, I had his passion and focus at my disposal.

So, redefining success, I began to feel so good that I contemplated moving. And beyond that, I felt so good I was in a perfect place to meet S, and that's when I did. And I was ludicrously happy.

We planned a trip. A trip after months of waiting for, we'll be off on this weekend.

Moving? Relationship? Those are success. And once again I wasn't on the same team as the ten year old me anymore, we were butting heads. I felt him, sowing doubt, muttering, glaring, plotting. I grew numb with worry and felt...not so much depressed like I'd been so many years, but...off.

He'd remade himself in my father's image with me as the enemy, or maybe it was the other way around.

Whatever way it was, I realized: I'm tired of fighting. For one thing, I know if we play it by my father's rules, I'll never beat him. And what use would life be without the generative spark that ten year old carries, if I did manage to win?

That ten year old me is devious, adaptive, fiendishly tireless, exuberantly focused, unflappable, unstoppable and while I was depressed when he stepped in to run the show, that part of me that was effecting my “failing my way” plan was not itself depressed. Angry, oh yes. But never depressed. So, why would I want to crush that?

But now the relationship, that part of me is up in arms against, has me on a trip with S for the first time, in less than two days.

After the End: Howl

Three months ago, I got the image of that four year old in the hallway, hopeless. I pictured myself as an adult sitting in the living room. I looked to the hallway, and saw the boy curled up in a fetal position at the edge of the light, the longing shining in his eyes. I invited him to come into living room and sit with me. He got up and ran in to jump onto the couch. But while he was happy, he eyed the door to the hall he'd left.

“Are you afraid of the Wolf?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he can't come in here. Watch.” And I pictured a clear shield going down over the door and the windows and keeping the Wolf out. “Whenever you want to come in here, you can, ok? You're never not allowed to be in here, ever again. And whenever you need that and don't feel safe, we can think up a word that when you say it, I'll know you need to be safe in this space, ok?”

The relief told me it was better than ok.

A few weeks after that conversation, I was in a class and I was having a difficult time of it. I was fighting the urge to flee the class in fear. I scrambled for a tool to help me stay. I'd been using the image of a bear last year. I tried it and it didn't do the trick. And there close at hand was the wolf. I turned my head up and closed my eyes and imagined myself gearing up for a first-class howl. And suddenly there was the safe word echoing within me, loudly.

I pictured the little four year old again. “Erik, go sit in the living room now. Me, I need to spend some time running with the wolf and I know you need to feel safe. So go be safe. I'll be back when class is over.” And he was gone. Inside, I howled. Outside, I ran that class down to ground and sank my teeth in. I rode home that night, fiercely proud, howling still, and this time, the picture of the boy was back, on my shoulders, howling with me.

After the End: Checking In

Today, I've grown in many areas of my life. But even now, I cannot hold a job because that is success. I cannot write a book or find a partner or buy a car or a house or start a family because they are all flavors of success, and to that ten year old they would be set ups for a worse fall, so even without consciously doing it, even while consciously realizing it makes no sense, I opt out.

Ten years ago, I was still working, but I was restless. My job was vaguely prestigious, and paid very well. I had enough money to get the house, the car, support a family. It scared the Hell out of me and I stumbled. I found myself sinking into fugue states again.

Even before I melted down, I knew I needed a change. I tried, ten years ago, to reach through the walls I'd built up within myself, thrown up to keep not merely my father from me, but me from Me.

“How's it going, Erik?”

“I want to go home.”

“Where's home? What does that mean? Is there anything I can do to get what I want right now?”

“I want to go home.”

“I hear that, but what does that mean? What do I need, to make that happen?”

“I WANT TO GO HOME.”

“I know. I want to get me home. Please, tell me how that works?”

“IWANTTOGOHOMEIWANTTOGOHOMEIWANTTOGOHOMEIWANTTOGOHOMEIWANTTOGOHOMEIWANTTOGOHOME....!”

And for perhaps eight years, that was all I heard rattling inside me, when I turned inward to ask what I needed for me to be happier being me.

About two years ago, I started getting a few other short answers, when times were calm. But if I asked about what something meant, or if things got tense in life, everything would again retract into the endlessly run-on litany of I-Want-To-Go-Home.

After the End: The Vow

At age nine, I was tested and found to be very intelligent. My parents scrambled to get me into an accelerated academic program. By this point I was already part of the way into the second semester of fourth grade. We toured the school and the class I'd be in. I hated the place. My parents asked me what I thought of it. I said I didn't know. They suggested I try it, and if I didn't like it, when the school year was over, I could go back to my old school for fifth grade. The idea sounded stupid to me. I said that sounded ok.

The school was worse than I'd feared. I was ostracized. I went from the smartest kid in my class on Friday to the lost moron in my new class on Monday. The teacher had no interest in getting me up to speed with the class. She assigned another student who wasn't fond of me to tutor me up to what they were learning. He did his best to fail and he did. And I learned in first grade not to bring my homework to my father. So I suffered feeling like I was stupid for the first time in my life in silence and went again into a fugue state. I suffered the ridicule from my classmates—and believe me, smart kids are the meanest kids there are—mostly in a fugue state, too.

The year ended and I told my parents I wanted to go back to my old school like they promised I could. They said tough, I was staying.

Fifth grade was very little but a red mist of anger and resentment. I realized then that opportunities that looked like potentials for happiness or success were a trap set to hurt me. They led to failure. And I realized that I had no recourse, no power to make it otherwise. I only had one source of power—the ability to sabotage my set ups for failure with a more fundamental failure. I could only choose to give into my father's failures for me, or opt out and set up my own failures.

So again, I made an oath. I vowed I would fail at everything in life, unravel every success. Partly to escape the traps set for me, and partly to illustrate to my father that he was a failure as a parent. Dark? Yes, it really was. But it was my only sense of personal efficacy. And for several years, it was the only thing that kept me alive. And it was another oath I took very, very seriously. And I proved to be VERY good at carrying it out. I was Fenris, swallowing the sun, and bringing about my own daily Ragnarok.

After the End: Confidence

When I was six, I was angry. I remember arguing with my father over math homework I insisted I didn't know how to do, even though I did. I remember again being spanked a lot with a belt and a lot of yelling and insults being hurled at me. What I don't remember is anything else from age six. It's a blank. I recall back to the crib at six months of age and forward from age eight. I'm told I changed at age six, and went from being happy, talkative, and agreeable to being surly, secretive, and argumentative. But six and seven are almost entirely blank otherwise. Aside from my father and the belt, I get a mental image of an uncle by marriage who I feel did something terrible, and a lot of anger and very little else.

I recall the fighting with my dad and the realization that I couldn't trust him. That I wanted to trust him, to tell him about my uncle, but I couldn't and I felt that despondency from four again, but constantly. I was angry, but to show that to my father was to get a beating. I was afraid but to show him that was to get a beating. I was deep in grief, but to share that with him that was to get a beating. I couldn't talk to him. My parents tried to get me to talk. The feeling that I couldn't trust them deepened, so that one of the few things from six I do recall is vowing to never tell them another thing about myself again in my life. It was a vow I took very seriously. I didn't have parents; I had enemies. I put on a mask and lapsed into silence. If they insisted I talk, I tried very hard to figure out what they wanted to hear, and parrot the expected words when I could. My own self-image on that level became a desperate attempt to mirror what was expected of me. I set my own gauge of safety and success outside myself.

By seven the despair from the isolation, the confinement, and the loss of a sense of self was overwhelming, and the only thing at all from age seven I remember is standing in a friend's back yard. Whoever the friend was, was inside, as were his parents. I stood at the edge of their pool, at the deep end and went into a fugue state staring into the depths of the water. And, staring thus, I leaned forward and dropped myself into the water and forced all the air from my lungs, and willed myself down. I recall looking up through the water and seeing a blur of shapes running around the pool, then diving in to pull me out, and that's all of age seven I have left anymore.

After the End: The Squirrel

When I was four, I dreamt every night a wolf was coming to eat me. I lived in terror of the coming night and when put to bed, I pulled my eyelids open with my hands and begged the Universe to permit me not to sleep. Every night my pleas were denied and I'd dream it again. And again.

I remember begging to be allowed to stay up. I remember being yelled at for doing so. I remember being spanked a lot with a belt. I stopped asking. But I couldn't give in to sleep. I'd creep from my room, down the dark hallway to the living room on hands and knees. As I approached the end of the hall and the door to the living room, I'd slink lower, and lower, making myself smaller, the closer I got to the warmth of the light, the sight of my parents settled in on the coach, the sound of them talking and the television burbling. I yearned. I couldn't go back to my room. I couldn't go any further forward. I lay on the floor at the end of the hallway, desperately silent, desperately small, and I wept without any sound, trapped.

I fell into a lifelong pattern of severe depression at age six, but there in the hallway at age four, was when I first experienced it, the hopelessness of being pinned between two flavors of loss.

If you asked me then what I wanted to be when I grew up, I'd have answered I wanted to be a squirrel. High above the dogs and wolves, of course, but more than that, they were motive, antic, playful, watchful, and simple. They leapt and ran. They were nimble. They were free.

Turning Back

I was late to my appointment. I'm always late for my appointment. Have you ever noticed when you can't stand people around you, that's when the Universe throws more and more people into your path? Them, their pets, their cars, their shopping carts. I find when I can't stand people the most is when I'm to my pompadour in them. So, being late, and feeling ornery, every empty street had one car right in my path as I rode, so it was stop and go the entire way. I got very tunnel-visioned and had retreated into grumbling. Grumbling, grimacing—no wonder no one waved as I rode past.

On a long stretch of multi-use path, off the road, running through a tiny strip of parkland alongside the railrunner tracks, the Universe added wind to the mix, so that the downhill felt like it was uphill with the cold headwind blowing grit into my eyes. I grimaced more and cranked with all my might, standing over the pedals and vowing utmost effort no matter the obstacles.

Two hundred yards ahead, where the path's downhill evened out before Second Street, I saw what looked like a roll of cloth fall into the bike path. Or like a tent being unfolded. I couldn't tell. It was merely an obstacle and it irked me. I pushed harder.

As I got closer I realized it was a man. Sprawled out like a sunbather across the path. I pulled to the right as we came together to pedal past him, glared down at him balefully and bit back the desire to bark out an insulting demand that he get his clueless ass out of my way. I shook my head and pushed harder. Anger's ugly company. Its got hardwired into the behavioral impulse to attack. Whether one does so or leaves, its payload is hostility. So I glared.

Fifty yards on a woman was walking the opposite direction. She flagged me down, so I slowed. “Is that a person there?” she asked me.

“Yeah, it is,” I responded with a tone meant to say, “It's ludicrious, right? Can you believe some people's gall?” before pedaling past her.

But her tone hadn't been incredulity, curiosity or caution. It had expressed concern. As I crossed Second Street, a creeping unease stole over me as it dawned on me that the prone man had likely been too hurt to give much thought to my convenience. And I had ridden past him, like the sort of New Yorker that exists in most midwesterners' imaginations. Shame flared in me.

I actually rode another 30 yards. Shame's a nasty masterpiece. It carries in it the impulse to hide. I was 30 yards along my master plan of riding away to hide my face for having turned my back on someone in need, especially from the woman whose concern I'd brushed off as I rode past.

But I couldn't do that. Anger gets bigger when you feed it with ungentle acts. Shame blossoms when you hide. The only way to reduce them is to act contrary to such instincts and to paddle the currents in the dark whirlpool of of your own unkindness in the opposite direction, until the feedback loop slowly grinds to a halt, then sluggishly begins to ooze at your direction.

I rode back. The woman had just arrived to stand 30 yards away from the man, unsure what she should do next. I got off my bike and approached the man. One eye was open blearily, scanning past me without registering me.

“Sir, are you ok? Can you hear me, sir? Are you hurt? Tell me, can you hear me? Please, sir, are you ok?” I said, voice raised, over the man. He lay, breathing, but unmoving. His eye had drooped shut and he showed no sign of hearing me. An abraised cut was under his right eye.

Had I ridden on, I don't know what the woman would have done. She had no phone and no idea of how to proceed. I called 911. I told the operator all the details I had and she asked if I would go to the street to flag the ambulance when it got there. I said I would, then got off the phone, turned to the woman next to me and relayed the information to her, asking if she would remain with the man while I went to the street to direct the medics here. She nodded. I rode off and flagged down the ambulances as I called to postpone my appointment.

The medics got out of the ambulance 100 yards off and began to walk leisurely towards the victim. They glanced at me out of boredom but said nothing to me. So I filled them in on what happened, though they didn't seem to care much. Another ambulance pulled up on Second Street, and two more medics began walking along the path behind us.

As the two medics I was walking with approached the victim, they called out to him brusquely, “Hey, PAL, get up. We know you're ok. Just get up, right? Look, if you don't get up right now, you're getting something unpleasant up your nose. So get up already.” They handled him roughly. The next two medics were putting on their blue gloves as the joined the first two, riffling through the man's pockets. I saw another ambulance pull up and two more medics began walking down the path as well.

The woman said we'd done all we could and walked back to her job. I remained. I wasn't sure if they'd need information from me, and I wanted to see if the man was going to be ok.

One medic finally took note of me. “Did you see what happened to him?”

“Well, I saw him fall, but I was 200 yards off. I didn't see what happened,” and I recounted everything.

The medic shrugged, “Enh, he's faking. Or at most he's drunk. If someone's really hurt, when we lift their arm and drop it over their head, it hits them in the face. His swerved to land above his head, so he'll be fine.” He shook his head. “You can go now.”

They loaded the patient into the ambulance and I rode off.

Faking. A little annoyance at the idea. And a lot of shame for wasting a minute of riding away and back when I could have called first thing.

Then it dawned on me that there's countless ways to be in distress enough to fake being injured in order to get help—I've been there before. And I realized the greatest shame would have been to give into shame at all. Which after 30 yards, I gave up on. Help is about the offer, not about the assessment of worthiness of the person it might be offered to. And bravery isn't about never running, it's about turning back to retrace the steps laid down in flight, to look squarely at the thing you fled.

Today, the Universe didn't throw people in my path, after all. It threw me in theirs. Because they needed me there.

Vast Forward

Revelations are in short supply. Then revelations are in abundance. The seasons roll through bringing an ebb and flow of different varieties of plenty without any sense of the lay of the land as I approach. Boon, bust—only the unfolding of time reveals which I am facing. There are revelations of who I am, and revelations of how I am. The first is food for thought, the second is food for action. Years of cognitive realizations left me ponderous but without recourse, and of revelations of action, I had none. So there were years where while I was thinking furiously I stood stock still. Finally, last year I made a string of realizations about how to do what I would. It was a spring, summer, and fall of ferocious transformation. Then the winter was a time for dreams and sleep, the hibernating of goals and epiphanies. And the returning spring brought the question: “What will I brave this year; what dangers will be mine to dare?” So that new revelations—behavioral realizations—began to surface.

Three things came to me. The first was that I can't work the way others do. I have things that the doing of them brings joy, but only if I dabble in several at once. I can't commit to one mastery, so I won't. I tried with Lindy Hop and it burned out. I learned that Lindy was the fuel, but not the fire. When one joy dims, the fire finds new fuel. Not out of grief at the old fuel gone, but in the joy of transformation, faced with new tinder, new timber and new warmth. The second was that my greatest fear is to forge a creative path. To write, to dance, to draw, to imagine, to create. I spent a life seeking office jobs because the creative path is dangerous. So, bravery for me, a penultimate bravery, would be to find a way to make the center of my being the center of my path, and find a way to live a creative life foremost and put the safe life away. The third was that creation isn't a matter of something from nothing, it is merely revealing what I already am. My life is already the narrative, my heart is already the beat of a song. The byways of my own history, the detours, the false starts and lurching pace—it's already a book, begging to be written in text the way it's already writ large in every one of my days.

I had a goal this last decade: “I want to spend the rest of my life, writing a book I never finish that no one will ever read.” It was about writing for writing's sake, creation centered on the process, not the outcome. But I realized, with my three epiphanies, that it was also about invisibility. My narrative is my path, and my path meanders, but it deserves to be seen—it's a disservice to live the invisible life. So, I've modified the goal now: “I want to spend the rest of my life living a book that I never finish writing, that everyone can read.”

Three things came to me. But they didn't come alone. I was perhaps four months from those three realizations; I could already feel them, nascent. They'd probably have arrived, in slightly different form perhaps, by the beginning of fall. But their final delivery came early and was in the arms of a woman. She brought them with the opening of spring. She is the opening of spring.

The Season of Yes

The question to ask in this newly-minted green, now that a year has passed since I woke again from a decade's sleep, and forged a path through fear and misery to find my way back these past four seasons, to the clamorous assent of all the byways of life, is this: now that year of old bravery is done, winter's past, hibernation's over and fire's rekindled in this wind-blown spring, what does my bravery look like this year?

Last year I learned panic's only beaten by marching right through it. I can't avoid it by halves and expect to see the end of it by detouring around it. Lethargy's only beaten by activity, activity that pushes the boundary to injury. I can't avoid injury and expect to feel alive. I can't avoid toil and expect to feel joy. Despair's only beaten by finding joy in falling down. And in knowing the gift of getting back up is the whole point of mishap.

So, what mishap will I dare this year? What injury will I risk? What fear will I face?

A Toast Long Past

When my best friend was married, it was to an amazing woman, but I admit before they wed I struggled with ambivalence. I was recalling the speech I gave as Best Man at the reception to someone dear to me a few nights ago, so I wanted to put it down here. This is the best I can remember of what I said, all those years ago. No doubt M and A remember it differently. But here is my recollection:

"I've known M for half my life. We've been through everything together. He's my best friend. I've always been fiercely protective of him and for years no woman was ever going to be good enough for him, as far as I was concerned. A, I know, is perfect for him and he for her; I think we all saw that clearly during today's ceremony, if any didn't believe it before.

"But today I got to see something no one except the groom, got to see. Standing to M's side and a small step behind him, I got to see over M's shoulder and into A's eyes. I got to look into her eyes as she said her vows; got to see into her eyes as she listened to M saying his. I saw a well of such deep love that I was dumbfounded. I already knew M felt as much for her. Today I saw her radiate as much for him.

"And a few paces away from them, I saw both M and A suddenly separate from the rest of us. We couldn't touch the thing they shared. They were too much a part of each other to share that paired isolation with us. So as we stood in the garden, and as we watched them, they were apart--in a clear bubble or orb that demarked a space none of the rest of us could enter into.

"That globe they were in, that they're still in--it's their relationship, and I saw it. They were suddenly within it, creating that new space themselves, that new thing out of the intense, perfect regard they gave each other. A new world within this one, that was made up of just the two of them, but was immediately more than just these two people. I don't know who else saw it, that bubble of otherness they shared, but I did today. I saw it. And I was humbled.

"So I propose a toast: to my best friend, and to his best friend."

Forgiveness

I dream of one woman.

There are many characters that swim in and out of my dreams: men, women, children, and creatures usually confined to Henson/Froud collaborations.

But when I dream of my time with a woman, not just a romp with one, but a connection, I dream of one.

Every time, she's different. A different person, a different face, manner, voice. But despite the changes in costuming, if I look at her out of the corner of my eye, the differences fall away and I see the same woman looking at me.

She is not anyone I'd met, though she's often looked like women in my life. And she is, despite Freud's breathless insistence, not my mother.

What she is, though, is an unwavering thread that weaves through years of relationships, isolation, infatuations, flings, and slapstick sexual pratfalls. She is the Universe. I do not see God in the world, I see her. She is my own personification of everything. I say that as an atheist, and the admission doesn't change one iota my connection to her.

I am not visited by her regularly, mind. She has probably not been a companion of mine more than 30 times throughout my life. No doubt less; I haven't counted.

Her visits have been profound, and alter my state of mind for a month or more. Typically, such a change is not a happy thing. For years, when she'd visit, wearing the face of whatever woman was most prominent in my life at the time, we'd fight. The disagreement would be over nothing of consequence, but it would be accompanied by such unhappiness, such psychological unkindness and emotionally manipulative disrespect from her, that I would wake in a funk that might take a long time to shake off.

Her last visit was perhaps four years ago. Our relationship was changed in that one. We didn't fight. Or rather, the dream began after we had. She was lying on a couch, exhausted by our distance, and was dozing. I came into the room and looking down, felt all my feeling of betrayal and hurt bleed out, leaving only regret. I lay down beside her and tried to whisper to her how sorry I was.

But I awoke before I could finish and, apology unheard, we did not speak again. In the years since I journeyed through some of the darkest ages of my life.

Then the year just past turned around. And after such despair, I've clawed stubbornly out of that shadow and have nurtured my health and joy for a year now. From the worst, I find myself in what is becoming the best time of my life. Stubbornness and claws being what they are, I intend to cleave to this path for some time.

This week, she visited me again. And this time, for the first time in my life, we did not fight. We were all hands and bodies and mouths, pressing, seeking. And when I woke, there was no month of despair awaiting me, only sunlight and joy and the ludicrous, perfect sense that I am welcome and needed in this world.

The Color of Winter V: Willingness

I can't describe how displeased I was as I took a seat in the waiting room. I was lost in that ire, until I heard someone crying to my left. At first, that made me angrier still. Late, odorous, filthy, tired, and now I was being made to wait in what was a nexus of woe, a hospital waiting room. Fucking GREAT. I turned to cast a baleful glance at the person crying.

I froze and fell to pieces in mid-glance.

The person weeping was a developmentally disabled boy of perhaps 14. He was in his wheelchair. Not a hospital wheelchair he was in for liability issues—his lifelong wheelchair. He was slumped over in his own lap. His younger sister was cradling him in her arms. She was dried-eyed and was looking over my shoulder with calm determination—I guessed she'd been through this scenario often enough to be inured to it. On the back of his wheelchair was a very large oxygen tank—I gathered he had enough difficulty breathing he needed to have a large supply at hand at all times. He was sobbing desperately against his sister, but his breathing was a terrible struggle. He wept, snuffled, shook, hacked, wheezed, gasped and cried out breathlessly. The woman at the counter, being helped ahead of me, that caused me so much frustration, was his mother checking him in. Tears filled me. I'm crying again, writing this.

The bottom dropped out of my anger and all my fixation on my difficulties came apart. What the fuck was I doing? What did I have to be anxious about? I needed a shower, had a sore throat and was late for dinner. It beat a large dose of perspective into me. I don't suppose that's surprising. But it occurred to me how much all our suffering would diminish if we'd have the mindful presence to step more often outside of our own narratives and offer consolation to one another.

I closed my eyes and pictured myself breathing in his despair, his pain, his suffering. Breathing it in like a poisonous black smoke, taking it from him into myself. And I pictured myself breathing out clean, crisp spring air, clear and sweet—breathing it out so that it washed back over him. I held onto that for several minutes. And then I prayed.

“Universe, my throat is sore, I'm on disability and I've spent years trying to overcome depression and social anxiety. But I recognize it's all a luxury. You can take my health, take my happiness, take my friends, take years off my life, take my prosperity, my peace of mind, take my home, take away the things that I love, or my sense of purpose. You can have any or all of these things already, I know. You don't need my permission. But I'm offering them freely anyway. Take them, if they'll help. Ease his pain. Take what I have in trade and bring that boy some peace.”

The family eventually went upstairs. The woman behind the counter called me over. She apologized extensively for the time it took. But by then, I'd let all that go. I smiled at her and said it was all part of life. She checked me in, I turned in the vial next door and I rode to dinner, smelly, dirty and late. And I had a great night. The next day I realized I couldn't let all my control mechanisms go. I tightened my grip on my diet and on my sleep schedule. I resumed meditating. I started managing my finances again. And in so doing found I had 500 dollars less than I thought and would be in the red by the time rent was due—I guess the universe took me up on my offer of prosperity. Honestly, it gave me a silly sense of warmth to see my account dry, thinking that.

And with that, my weight began to drop again, a goal coalesced a pace or two ahead of me, and I could hear the ravens laughing in this burgeoning spring.

The Color of Winter IV: Willfulness

After tackling the bicycle problem head-on, I felt actually able to do what needed doing. I rode across town to the medical clinic and got my throat looked at. They found nothing wrong but took a culture to be tested at the hospital. I was handed a plastic bag with a vial inside.

“What's this?” I asked.

“Your throat culture.”

“And why are you giving it to me?”

“So you can take it to the lab.”

“Me? I thought you would do that.”

“Oh no. The lab's at the hospital. Just take it over and drop it off. You'll be in and out in two minutes.”

I was furious, and anxious because it was getting close to when I needed to be at a friend's birthday. I was in clothes that stank of sweat and I was still somewhat smeared with bike grime. But I had no choice, so I rode it to the hospital. It took five minutes to find the lab and when I put the vial on the counter, the man behind it looked at me like I'd just spit in his mouth.

“What's that?” he asked.

“A culture from OnCall.”

“Why is it on my counter?”

“I was told to drop it off here.”

“Well, have you checked it in at the Registration desk?”

“Uh...no?”

“Then take it away. We can't do anything with it until you've checked it in.”

By this point, I was livid. I found the Registration desk. The woman behind the counter was already helping someone. I stood a few paces back. She looked up at me, surprised.

“Are you waiting, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Well, here, take this pager. We're going to be a while.”

The Color of Winter III: Not This Time

Two weeks ago I felt withdrawn. I was exercising a lot, but the effort to do so seemed inordinate. A few steps into my midweek dance class, I was lightheaded, weak, and a sore throat I'd had for two months became unbearable. I dropped out of the class and while it was a reasonable thing to do, I felt ashamed and shaken for doing so. I vowed I would finally get my sore throat tested the following day. That night, I had a terrible dream of both my parents telling me they were dying. I woke off center and couldn't find my momentum. The class had shaken my confidence in my body. The dream had shaken my confidence in my emotional state. Doctors' offices shake me in general. So it took the better part of the day to go. At which point, I realized I had a broken spoke on my bike.

I'd never replaced a spoke. It was on the right side of the rear wheel, behind the free wheel. I'd need to take that off before I could replace the spoke, then put it back on. I'd never removed or put on a free wheel before, either. I stood there, gaping at my bike, trying to make the logistics of how I would get the bike fixed, get to the medical clinic, and get through the next several days, come together. But they wouldn't and after a few minutes, I gave up and retreated inside. I felt the deep urge to hide. Beyond the bike and the trip to the clinic, I had plans for the evening. I contemplated canceling them.

And then I recalled the car I gave up almost a year earlier. Hiding hadn't helped then, and believing it might help now left me angry. I pictured everything paralyzing me with fear and pictured the hardest, most proactive thing I could do in response. I called a friend who'd know, O, and asked him how much damage it would do, riding the bike as it was, to the bike workshop. None at all, he told me. So I rode there. The place was deserted. I'd watched people do the procedures I needed to do to disassemble, fix and reassemble my bike. Once. I recalled it, held it in mind, and fixed my bike myself. The repairs were perfect. My dimmed confidence began to brighten. That bear's bellowing roar came back to me. I rode off to face the day, reinvigorated.

The Color of Winter II: Fade Out

Holidays are hard for me, typically. At my worst, the few years before this last one, I slid into hopelessness at the beginning of October and didn't crawl out again until April. This last year, I struggled some, to make social plans, but much of the rest of my life was unscathed. The hardest period was nothing compared to that black six months of years past, and it only lasted a couple of weeks around Christmas. But the holidays still wore at me. The weather wore at me. I was terrified to cycle in the snow and cold. And the prospect of moving, repeatedly yanked away from me, that wore at me most of all.

I managed a few great things over the winter. I applied for a job. The first time in six years of disability. I added two more dance nights, so that I was taking west African dance classes four times a week. I added another night of volunteering at the bike workshop, and I began to join the other volunteers in community activist projects. And I beat that snow and ice terror and got to cycling through the worst of the weather, feeling deeply empowered for having done so.

But with everything that wore at me, my social tendency suffered, confidence waned, direction became muddled. Trust in the universe and the sense that my path was open, beautiful and attainable, and the compassion that came with that sense, began to fade. I was still doing all the big things I'd cultivated over the last year, but all the small things I'd been doing to make it all flow smoothly were left unattended, and began to wither. And the scold of the raven, the roar of the bear--days passed, then weeks, where they would to fail to reach me at all. I wasn't in a nosedive, but my climb upward had become a precarious hang in space without my feet rooted in reality.

The Color of Winter I: On the Road.

Over the course of last spring, summer and fall, I'd found, after years of faltering, a steady rhythm for my life. I found it by focusing on what I would do instead of what I wanted things to be, and by fostering trust in the path the universe had in front of me, instead of the dread and worry over whether or not I'd managed to cover all my bases. The patterns led me from one thing to the next, not through the fixation on long term goals, but by taking that which most enlivened me that was suddenly close enough at hand to be reached one step ahead of where I was already standing. And trusting as I was learning to do, every step, there was another deeply rewarding goal another step along. The sense that life is a journey was vivid and visceral.

So, after a progression of wonderful steps, I was offered a chance for my first trip out of Santa Fe in several years. I helped me friend, D, move his belongings from Santa Fe to Seattle. We cleaned, refurbished and then packed up the house, and drove the truck cross country. Over the course of the last several years, time away from home became unbearable. But the offer felt like the next step I hadn't realized I wanted, one pace beyond where I stood, so I took the opportunity. The trip was enlivening beyond description. I danced and felt my joy in that rekindled; I met with friends who I hadn't seen in 7 years, and some I hadn't seen in 20.

And while there, D dropped a bomb in my lap—he offered to rent me a room in his house there. I was being offered a chance to move. Anyone who's talked with me at length these last 8 years or so knows how often I've spoken of moving. I've never felt quite at home here. Just the offer was enough to kick my overplanning impulse into high gear. So I was knocked off kilter when the offer had to be rescinded. Shortly after, my roommate here in town offered to move my things up to Seattle when he moved back to Portland this summer. And shortly after that, THAT offer had to be rescinded. The entire issue of whether or not to move is a separate post by itself, so I won't get into that any more here, but I spent a large portion of my winter stumbling around due to the roller coaster the prospect turned out to be.