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.