What did I learn and forgot
Life Returning
Traveling through a Universe called Once
I lay on the cold, wet sand contemplating the lap of the waves, thinking of nothing, feeling no pain, as near to dead as one can be, eyes closed, heart barely heard, no warm temperature to the body.
I await life returning.
Anywhere in suburban California I’m a block away from the nearest therapist, Life Coach, Chinese Acupuncture, Health and Wealth Therapy, Motivation Therapy, Reality Therapy, Ego Therapy, or anyone at all who, for a fee, will say life is fucked up. So might a friend, minus the fee.
Friend’s, however, don’t know why or how to make it right.
I cannot imagine a time when I decided to end up crazy wild or feel this void in life should be made any greater than it is. They are no answers. I can, however, walk on the sand, accepting that my footprints will soon leave no evidence of me ever having there.
That’s my therapy. The sand.
I’ve always been backing away from life, not wanting loneliness to be the start of some future madness. What happened has happened, no sorry epitaph. I wanted success, even craved it. I don’t want to explain it or apologize for it, just that it was needed. It filled a bigger space. I sailed through life single handed. I was never lonely, just alone.
Love is found mostly in the suburbs, inside a bar, sitting at a desk inside an office block, on international flights, or walking on Sausalito’s curved ocean front, hoping to be drawn to a smile. I never looked to hide from love, only life. I’m not a shy person but standing in front of a woman after she’d first listened to friends’ stories, heard exaggerations, nonsense spoken, I wanted to gather up assumptions, as many there were in those summers that have long forgotten my shadow, fill a bag with decades of memories and take them down to the shore, but what use is retracing footsteps in the sand of what was once my time.
Love, all we know, is an emotion full of collateral beauty. I’ve lived a life in La La Land, never imagining the indecency of what I have suffered. I lived most of my life in a land of dragons, a dark, satanic place, full of witches, ruined castles, Vikings and warriors, of lochs, and of fishermen. I hallucinate stories in February just as easily as in September. Love’s drowsiness filling my thoughts, carrying me forward, coming from what I thought was always going on toward forever.
I love the sunset colors, evenings that lengthen shadows; remembering times when no shadow was visible. Lately, I sleep late, seldom seen in the scarlet mornings, or walking amid the gold behind the trees. How did I come to depend on sunsets more than sunrise, even when no sunset comes?
I like to fill my head with sunshine past, walking with memories in the shadow of togetherness. Racing over sand-dunes, hurrying down shores, flying through wind swept skies to come down where? I have run through life so fast I missed the things worth stopping for. I never gave thought to where I was going, or with whom. I was just flying. Things change, shadows stay, and memories are never so old they cannot dart down cliffs like butterflies, or grow like marigolds, or dazzle like dandelions.
Will I ever get it right? I bury my face into a towel, feel my heart bursting. What if we have four or five lives, a dozen, or learn that our spirit is immortal, yet we never find ourselves again?
I’m glad. I don’t want to meet me.
Sleep comes in fits and starts; sometimes I’m not sure if I’m in a dream of life, or simply on a journey into self. I peer into the dark, wondering where I am.
I take myself to the bathroom and wash tears away, but as I do more happen. First light slits a path in the sky above the Frisco skyline. I pick up my toothbrush, and wonder why does a lonely man worry about the purity of his breath come morning? Habit, though, is comforting and reassuring. Habit is hopeful.
See me now, walking, hands in empty pockets, and all the time I’m looking for her and meeting other men who could, with a single clap of their hands, give her Paris, complete with bistro’s, flowers, wine, and book shops. Then, with another clap, offer her Constantinople.
But I’m not looking right or left as I walk down the Rue de la Paix on a Saturday morning in October. The next day, coming down Fifth Avenue, looking at every face. Then, the first Sunday in December, crossing Picadilly Circus on my way to Trafalgar Square, I refuse to look sideways, just walk on, past ten thousand years of mistakes, making my way to Sausalito.
I have been everywhere, seen everything, and never came upon anyone like you. I have been afloat on every ocean and never saw your light calling me home. I have spent days lost in cities and never brushed up against the imagination, then one day, out of the blue imagination came to me. The story of a woman I’ll never know how to finish, never write a last chapter, never close.
I’ve tried in life not to do things which I know can be done equally well by others. While such an approach has brought heartache, real heartache, it also brought fantastic opportunities, and as I’ve grown into my writing, I have learned how to step aside from the rushing days and sometimes crushing pressures of civilization and modern life. The most hostile environment is the one we live in day-to-day and not the barren, hard, savage places that so often appear in headlines.
A most competent authority said: The man is strongest who stands alone but I do not think he meant that every man who stands alone is necessarily strong. I had to seriously think about that.
I have learned the value of mistakes, now content with my life. Sharing my thoughts is a privilege. Having the title of author is not really who I am, it’s grandiose. I am husband and father, sometimes a thug, often a drunk. Success is no longer important, writing is.
Shakespeare himself would have wept at life’s tragedy. At times, life felt like creativity gone mad. Truthfully. We have all crossed boundaries; all attended the university of hard knocks.
I have no proof either way that to stop writing would help me live a better life. To write that novel that is in us all. I have often said of my work: I am a professional liar. It is true. Lies create the mystic of the writer. I cannot deny past professions, the injuries, hurts, deaths, or the love I felt for the work.
Writing does not make the past easier. Writing has not been smooth, though it has been a pleasure. God knows I feel guilty about many things but none more than the lack of time with family. I did all the wrong things. I have no-one to whom to complain. But, too, I have done things of which I’m proud. It hasn’t always been a lie. There have been many instances of altruistic behavior, and I’ve taken huge risks that ordinarily I would never have taken but for love. Risks that came close to killing me for sure. Ultimately it has turned me into a particular kind of man; one I hope has learned this final lesson.
I cannot remember who, not me, said, and I quote: You must be always drunk. That’s all there is to it — it’s the only way. End quote.
I want to respond: Thank you. It’s true. If you are skeptical do this when sober: remember the violence, the savagery, beauty, ugliness, and yes, the glory, but then recall how wrong a life it has been, fantastically wrong as a life can be.
If only I could have been drunk.
But life is never for sure, tragedy is hiding in some midnight place.
Pain hides, it haunts. It haunts to this day. It’s out there, somewhere. Some need for fear, I guess. I don’t know. I do know a thing or two about humbleness. I know what is unattainable and free. I’ve been close to the Humpback whale, followed behind the dolphin’s flight, known a charmed existence, and maybe it doesn’t matter if I don’t have the skill of an engineer or the intrigue of a scientist because I’ve got something. I can neither describe it nor paint it nor prove how it was, is, or will be. It’s just me, living in a privileged place and time. It’s just me writing, but not able to say how I feel — not in command of my flight toward or away, but a pilot in a new universe called Once and so the exploration begins.
There can never be a past life, as indeed never a future life. What is happening now is what is, there can be no more. Either I grasp it and hold it dear or let go and spend a lifetime wondering. I want to believe there’s some reason for living that makes sense, some principle that will help me through the hard times. It’s not a religion; I tried that. In the end, it can only be what I feel for another person. It’s about trying to give the world my true self.
Approved by A Shayens Abran
