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.