More free of spirit

Weekend spent pretty far outside my comfort zone with a roomful of strangers. I didn't dislike any of them. How often does that occur?

Journey

When the spirits tell you through a complete stranger that if you don't let go of what has left you it's going to kill you, there's some gravitas there. 

When you go out there

Sitting in the laundromat reading about trauma while two apparently deranged individuals talk at top volume about how much they love trump and how, when he gets re-elected, everything is going to be alright. What is it about laundromats and people expounding on their political affiliations lately? What adult brain thinks anybody (let alone the sleaziest motherfucker you can name) is going to make everything alright? What's with the widespread messianic language and this human turd? 

The lady in the post office said, "Oh! Handsome!" when she saw the photo in my old passport taken twenty-six-and-a-half years ago. I wish I'd known that back then. The man in line said I was still looking pretty dapper, and I thanked him for that. The passport application has finally been submitted and that particular psychic obstacle has been removed. 

Poly

She told me she was polyamorous and a swinger even though I hadn't asked. Gross, I thought. Great, I said. Me, I can't find even one I like enough to hang around let alone poly. It's a new world, I guess. God bless all-a-yuns. 

I went back to the place last night. A couple of weeks ago, my experience there was nearly magical. Which is to say I had a good time. In fact, I think there have actually been three good times. It was exactly the same place featuring many of the same faces. This time there was also a bulldog who seemed to like the way I pet her around the ears. She hung out with me as long as I was feeding her pizza crusts. Relationships are transactional, I'm hip. I know some of the people there by name now. The bartender knows my name. I'll be a regular soon. 

But the portal I seemed to have walked through before which transformed the mundane to magic was nowhere to be found. I felt mildly uncomfortable and that gradually shifted in the direction of moderately. I became annoyed and avoidant. And at 10:30pm, I felt noticeable relief walking out the door and heading home. Something told me it was over.

Memento Mori

I get stuck in these procrastination what-ever-you-call-ems every so often. Some episodes last for a few hours and some can last for many years. What exactly is holding me back is nearly always a mystery that defies logic and common sense. Certainly there are subconscious dynamics at play. 

Anyway, one of these lingering episodes has been around obtaining a replacement passport. Mine expired in 2007. 

Today, I took a giant step forward and got my photo taken for the new passport. When it was printed, I compared it side by side with the photo in my original passport taken twenty-six and a half years ago. 

Ouch. 

Kinfolk

We shared a surname, and it turned out that we were kindred spirits too. 

Call me "Nobody," he said. Only the Moon understands me. 

Sonoran

You found yourself, despite months of effort, inside a carapace. Wearing a breast plate. Crack it open, it said. But my finger tips couldn't find a purchase and would have likely lacked the strength anyway. 

I saw myself ready for burial and shed no tears in letting that me go. So much time in miserable thought, it said. Lower the body, dressed in a suit, down into the hole. Spend your time another way going forward, Born Again. 

I spoke with other people. There were hugs. Getting beyond judgment and performance and separation sometimes only takes a little speaking and a little listening. Everyone has a story. Everyone has a wound that would make you love them if you knew about it.

The bright moon climbed higher as I got closer to home and to ordinary.

Can't we just call it going outside?

Maybe you think from reading what I've been writing lately that when I'm walking in nature I've achieved some perpetual blissed out state of being. This, I assure you, is not the case. 

Don't get me wrong, it's something I enjoy doing very much. Being out there often takes me out of my head and its dark imaginings and plugs me back into the larger world. Nature, that force of which we are all a part. But sometimes it still sucks.

Today, I walked about ten miles in my hiking boots. That's nothing much if you're a hiker but quite a bit if you're generally sedentary. Which I am. My feet complained. My joints were a little creaky. The muscles in my feet and legs and hips and back were a little stiff from walking yesterday. I felt somewhat depleted and that seemed to effect my balance and coordination. I tripped on roots, rocks rolled under the soles of my boots, the voice in my head was often unpleasant. 

I filled the outside pocket of my backpack with trash found along the trail - beer cans, glass and plastic bottles, a dog's chew toy, food wrappers. I thought unkind thoughts about the people who litter and wantonly destroy. Then I remembered periods of my own wanton destruction and the voice turned on me. 

And yet it was a beautiful day. I didn't really want to be anywhere else other than outside in the woods walking in solitude. I'm just saying I'm not Snow White out there with a bunch of enchanted birds tying ribbons in my hair, okay?

Practice

Things aren't right. You're stuck. Inert. Your life is draining away. You lack thrust. There's a disconnect somewhere between you and your source of propulsion which, if pressed, you'd likely be unable to identify. 

After a pot of coffee, a heaping helping of self-loathing, and a few strong hits of anxiety; you make it out the door. 

On the trail, before 30 minutes have passed, you're a different person. Grounded, focused, cheerful. All the life around you is coming into bloom. How do you manage to forget so quickly that this is all it takes?

The swamps are greening with grass and the skunk cabbage which had only sprouted the last time I was out here has grown hearty. Flying insects, tiny spiders, a swimming beaver, mating crows, the first elegantly curled fiddle heads. I sat at the base of a huge pine tree at a bend in the high river and listened as I watched the eddies whirl. 

Surprisingly

This morning I took my 80 year old mother to some appointments and to do some shopping. We went out for lunch and had grilled cheese sandwiches made with bacon, tomato and basil. They were surprisingly good. At one point we drove past a strip club. LIVE NUDE DANCERS, said the sign. We'd been driving along in silence just listening to the radio. "Well that's good," my mother said. "I'm not really interested in watching dead nude dancers."

Trip

Went into Boston for music. Walked the streets of Somerville after having sweat through all my clothes. Spent, completely. It's good to lose your mind entirely every now and again. 

I danced, or something, and felt the energy in the form of sonic waves moving back and forth between the bands and the audience. I became actively involved in that exchange. Other people in the audience weren't much of a factor. They allowed me a lot of space though. I think I got a little closer to releasing something. I think I gave some and I know that I received. 

The night air was cool and I walked in only a t-shirt trying to get dry. I walked past a mostly-darkened hospital. There's an 8-year-old girl in there. I know because I helped to get her there earlier in the week. Her name jumped into my mind and I tried to send calmness in her direction. Summer camp with new friends.

There were only a few people out walking. One in skinny jeans and leather jacket weaving drunken diagonals along the sidewalk. At some point, while talking to myself, I overtook the person now sitting in a bus shelter. How's it going, man? I asked. The person stared blankly past me. Not there. Entirely elsewhere. All alone in that place.

I was looking up at a third floor apartment. There was an inviting yellow glow in the large window. Soft and warm. A string of Christmas lights along where the walls meet the ceiling. I imagined myself there.

To be invited. To be made welcome. To be received. 

I remembered with awe the act of being received. Did I understand the profundity of it then? I don't think so. I was too close. I felt it though. 

I understand the profundity of it now only because I am so far distant.

13

Five days she's been in that room the interior of which looks and feels like a storage unit with a television screen sealed in plexiglass up in the corner. There's a few holes drilled in the plexiglass to allow some of the sound to escape. The people who sent her don't visit or check on her. She's thirteen years old. What do you think she thinks?

Basic

One of the squirrels came by the slider early this morning, then to the kitchen window at about noon, and in the late afternoon, up the railing beside the stairs to make sounds toward me, I presume. I'm the guy with access to the sunflower seeds, it seems to have figured out.

The last time I got friendly with squirrels, two of those red maniacs chewed through a metal screen and ran amok in my house for a weekend.

Work kept me moving for about eleven hours today, and I did a ridiculous amount of yawning. I went outside after dark to feel the air and to see the stars and moon and the dark tops of the tall pines swaying against the cloudless sky and to listen to the sound of peepers. That made me feel better, opened something inside me. 

I don't really need any of that other stuff anymore. So many years of living under the weight of that concern.

Graduation season

That inescapable feeling of regret for what you haven't done rises up into your throat but you manage to swallow it. It's letting you know it's still there though. Time with my son yesterday as he prepares for another transition. So many things have to be done alone.

Today I'm heading to Rhode Island to watch my older son and his team try to make it into the national finals in his sport. The weather looks promising.

Advil didn't help

A swamp has descended upon us here. Sixty degrees and several days of rain. Humid and strange. I sang some songs last night. Met a local songstress who's doing a Patsy Cline show next month. Woke up this morning with a couple of new Facebook friend requests and a bad head.

Cremora

Don't identify with your feelings, they tell me. They're not really you. They're more like a cloud passing over you or, more accurately, like an arrow passing right through the heart of you. 

I've become the man who laughs aloud alone in the grocery store. I no longer mutter to myself. I talk out loud freely if I'm feeling like it. The kid stocking the shelves looks over discretely. He's probably doing it too. 

I feel sad every time I pass the Coffee Mate in the dairy section. I have for years now. 

Today, I had this feeling that I'd been recently reassembled by a careless mechanic who left out an essential component of my operating system. But I'm not going to identify with that sentiment. I found my heart out there on the trail a few weeks back. It's up on top of the refrigerator now. Don't forget it. 

I saw the first yellowing forsythia up here today and it made me a little ill. The way another baseball season does or one more New Year's Eve with all of that fucking joyful noise. I can't pretend I haven't seen it before or that it feels new to me. I'm tied to the wheel is what you're saying. That's all. 

April is the cruelest.

Forget your troubles

I'm trying to allow myself the happiness of small things. Real things. Like, for instance, last week I stumbled upon a place that has all-you-can-eat steamed clams for a reasonable price. Steamed clams in melted butter? Yup, I can raise some happiness for those. 

As I was wrapping up my shift today, I remembered that tonight's the night. I started dancing around the kitchen trying to make the most of this rising feeling of momentary happiness for shellfish. Fly Me To The Moon came into my head. Sinatra's version. Then I remembered. 

I've left rumination behind, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy a visit with a joyful memory now and again.  I remembered a few minutes of a particularly soaring kind of happiness while I sang that song to you one magical night. And that made me remember other moments too. We did enjoy some happiness together, you and I. Those moments are still like a box of collected gemstones to me. I'd like to sing that song again someday but, for now, I'll leave it there in happy memory with you.

Nature

I don't know why I didn't get excited about the eclipse today but I didn't. I was working from home. Somewhere between 3 and 4 in the afternoon, the quality of the outdoor light changed. It dimmed. The world around me seemed slightly more shadowy. That was it. 

After work, I headed out to the woods with a few items in my new backpack. The last storm took down a lot of great old trees and large parts of others. Sustained wind, wet snow and ice, and then powerful gusts proved a lethal combination. A tall oak fell in front of my house too. It snapped off about 15 feet up the trunk saving my house and car by choosing to fall in a neutral direction. 

I'm sorry friends. It hurt to see you broken like that. 

Alright then

There was a lot of dream activity this morning. I made a note to myself at one point to be sure to bring it back with me but, when I crossed over into waking life, the coherence was gone and only two fragments remained accessible. A mystic or a healer named Lemony. And a woman for whom popcorn was an important symbol. She kissed me with a mouthful of it.

My son is getting ready to graduate from high school. He's thinking about a solo road trip. The me that was him once says, "Go!". The me whose hand the little boy used to hold whenever we went out into the world says something else (silently). 

A young woman told me a story about being restricted to the parking lot of her family's business when she was a child. The neighborhood kids sometimes road by saying,  "Hi! We're all going to the park." She'd wave back and continue riding her bike in circles around the small parking lot. 

When her mother was angry with her or wanted to teach her a lesson, she'd make her lay on the floor and beat her across the butt and legs with a broomstick. She'd announce a certain number of lashes before administering the beating. Her mother would count them out loud, hesitating between the blows, using anticipation to its maximum effect. That makes the person on the receiving end clench and brace. 

Clenching and bracing eventually infiltrates your posture and you carry that response around in your tissues for the rest of your life. You also bring it with you into every relationship you find yourself in. That is, if you decide to have any relationships.

I keep seeing this little girl riding her bicycle in circles, lost in her imagination, telling herself stories about a better life. 

I'm the kid hiding in the bushes, a guerilla engaged in total war with the oppressors. I am watching her through binoculars. I recognize her. I want to tell her about the island in the reservoir and the sand bar under the surface of the water that would allow us safe passage. We could live there and be free. 

Cruelty is different from stress, different from lacking emotional intelligence, and different from being unable to control your rage. There's a calculus involved in it. One has to dedicate some time to it. A decision is made. There's a conscious intention. 

It doesn't matter what language the perpetrator thinks in, the message the receiver understands is always: "I will destroy YOU."

Tomorrow is the solar eclipse. I'm not planning to do anything differently. "The Path of Totality" though, I keep reading those words and wishing I'd written them. Ominous, right?

Out sometimes

A certain depressive confinement came in with the storm yesterday. Heavy, wet snow. The wind had blown itself out by evening. I put the last remaining birdseed out in the morning and attracted 20 or 30 birds who stayed around all day. By dark, I felt trapped and shrinking. I drove to a McDonald's run by teenagers. Their fries were cold. There was something careless and decidedly unappetizing about the Big Mac they assembled. Not a good start to an evening out. Stop at an ATM in a Cumberland Farms for just enough cash to power a four hour outing. Park on a side street and walk down to the bar. A few of the same faces from last week but mostly new ones. Technical problems with the karaoke system. A particularly loud and shrill voice. A scowling old man under a red trump 2024 cap - his badge of idiocy worn proudly. A few elements conspired to drive me out and back home early. It took a willingness to stick it out, having no place else to be, and a direct intervention in order to locate and merge with the strange magic but I finally did. Someone told me they thought they'd recognized me as a fellow weirdo. 

Know when to keep it shut

A day of yawning punctuated by the poly-substance addiction, loss of everything, walking the streets all night every night, and commercial sexual exploitation of other people and my own memories of other times and other lives. Kissing a girl in a parking lot and the way it stays with you evolving into a point of reference only you make any meaning of. Dinner is baked cod with gin and tonics. You try speaking the only Polish word you know to a misidentified Slovenian. It doesn't go over well. Outside, ice is falling from the sky, the winds are coming up, and the roads have frozen over. The peepers have gone silent.

Else

Tonight's a dark one accented with the sound of peepers and filled with the smell of rain. They say snow's on the way as part of all that weather battering its way east. A backpack arrived in the mail for me today. The cardboard shipping box sat soggy on the doorstep. I thought to myself as I picked it up that the stars we see are actually images from the past just like the me I'm imagining is. I became aware of myself walking up the driveway. A stranger in darkness. Becoming something else isn't sad. 

April arrives

Ill at ease today. 

The usual holiday political arguments and updated perspectives on the state of the world were darker than usual. It was easier when I represented the extreme of doom and gloom because there was some comfort in thinking that maybe I'm just out of my mind because the others seem so much more positive. Now it's me saying, we've got to heal ourselves first and others saying it's too far gone to matter. 

I burned sage and cedar in the house today. That sacred purifying smoke sent me back to a sun dance mindset. Sacrifice. Offering the only thing that actually belongs to you - your suffering - up for the greater good. I also burned it because I'd recently shut down one of the toilets in the house and I think the lack of water in it is allowing septic gases to back up into the house.

Took myself out to dinner later and regretted it immediately. A young woman with a piercing monotone talking ceaselessly and negatively seemingly directly into my ear. Barn rules and breaking horses and unfiltered criticism of the various riders (mostly children). By the end, I planned to visit her barn, release the horses into the wild, and burn the structure to the ground. 

I dreamed of cicadas last night. I don't think I've ever actually seen one. Certainly not around here. They were enormous and living in  the recesses behind the seats of my car. Ill at ease. A Voodoo priestess in New Orleans on my Instagram said the darkness is almost here and asked if we've prepared ourselves. 

It was a little harder to breathe today. But tonight, during my walk from the car to the front door, I heard the first peepers. I sat in a chair on my "lawn" and looked up through the pines at the clear sky and the brilliant stars. The first peepers were singing individually, as they do, but in a week there'll be so many more and they'll sound like a trained choir. They reminded me of the cycle of things, coming into being and passing away. The stars were cold, but not unkind, and they silently showed me how little any of this fleeting agony matters. 

Joyful participation in the sorrows of the world, Joseph Campbell said.