After it’s all jumbled Together

I lay on the cold, wet sand contemplating the lap of the waves, thinking of nothing, feeling no pain, near to death as one can be, eyes closed, heart unheard, no particular temperature to the body while I await life returning.

Mendocino was never my home, nor could ever be, but back there, in the shadow of Ben More, a hundred miles from the nearest billionaire, therapist, life coach, or anyone who believes my life is fucked up, that is my real home; my only home.

I don’t want to end up crazy wild or feel the void in my life is made any greater than it is. I have no idea where you are, where you’ll go, or when. There are no answers. I can, however, walk on the sand, accepting that my footprints will soon leave no evidence of me ever being here.

I’ve been backing away from life, yes, not wanting this loneliness to be the start of some future insanity. I understand what you feel; there is no reason for you to say anything. What happened has happened, no sorry epitaph. I felt for you, and it was as much love. I’ve never felt so in touch with anybody. I don’t want to explain it or apologize for it, just that it was something rare. You are a person of rare beauty.

I can finally let you go because I have no desire to feel this kind of wanting. You were like the ocean to me. Your eyes said everything about you. I cannot own this secret because to do so would still find me in love. I know it’s weak and it’s stupid, but I’ve sailed through life single handed all these years. Back then, when I met you — I learned what it was to have been lonely. I’m not lonely anymore, just alone.

I brought you panties home from Victoria’s Secret after first holding them up, trying to work out how they should look before a young assistant inquired if needed help?

In truth, I’m not any one more than you imagined; more than your friends or therapists might have imagined, only a man hallucinating with the idea of being in love and who never properly woke up.

If angels look down tonight, they would want to help me but, in their absence, you came to my rescue.

Love is found mostly in the suburbs, perhaps inside a bar, sitting in an office block, on international flights, or walking the Sausalito ocean front hoping to be drawn to a smile. I’ve never hidden from love, only life. I’m not a shy person but standing in front of a woman after she’d first listened to my friends’ stories, heard all the exaggerations, the nonsense spoken about my life, I wanted to gather the up the assumptions, as many there were as those summers that have forgotten my shadow, fill a bag with decades of memories and take them down to the shore, but what use that?

Retracing my footsteps in the sands of what was my time. Love, all we know, is one emotion full of collateral beauty. There are those who believe and those who will never.

I could know you, for you are truly beautiful, even when you can sometimes fill a sky with storms. I know, I know, poetic words for the ears of a sensible woman…but who are you that there is nothing of value in my written word.

I have lived most of my life in the land of dragons, a dark, satanic place, full of witches, ruined castles, Vikings and warriors, of lochs, and of fishermen.

I hallucinate in February just as easily as September. Love’s drowsiness filling my thoughts, carrying me forward from the past, coming from what I thought was always and going on toward forever.

I love the sunset colors, evenings that lengthen shadows; remembering all those 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 sunset more than sunrise, even when no sunset comes?

I like to fill my head with all the sunshine past, walking with my memories in the shadow of togetherness. Racing up sand-dunes, hurrying down shores, flying through wind swept skies to come down where? I seem to have run through my 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 running.

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. Hurry up, then, hold my hand, we’ve still so much to do.

Come, please, let’s laugh, run, and sing our way through what life is left. Help me leave our shadows on these Sausalito shores. Come, then, we will take the boat down to Mexico

Will I ever get it right? I bury my face into a towel, feel my heart bursting. What if I have four or five lives, or a dozen, or learn my spirit is immortal, yet never find myself 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 then take myself to the bathroom and wash tears away, but even 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 on any morning? Habit, though, is comforting and reassuring. Habit is hopeful. I look in the mirror to see sorrow laden eyes staring back at me.

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, book shops. Then, with another clap, offer her Constantinople.

But that man isn’t looking right or left as he walks 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 Piccadilly Circus on his way to Trafalgar Square. He refuses to look sideways, just walks past ten thousand years of mistakes, making his way to Sausalito. The one man, the only man who can hold a woman’s heart the same way the shoreline holds the ocean.

There is nothing, nothing in the wide world, or beyond, that I love more than you. How I found you I don’t know. 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 to you, then one day, out of the blue you were there.

I went to sleep against the warmth of your breasts and feel your body touching mine. You came to me with a vividness and completeness. I wanted to make it right, absorb you into my life, the whole steaming, sizzling, churning, communion of wanting to understand you. The novel about this women I’ll never finish, never write the last chapter, never write an ending to what she means to me, no, never. She’s so incredible to me but somewhere, something of what she is is alien to me, something not to be judged by superficial standards or moral ethics, something incredibly dirty and known only to the tramp in her and the voyeur in me.

I cannot lay my head down without wondering about her, seeing only the edges of things, and living in some space between her and what had gone before.

I’ve tried in my life not to do things, which I know can be done equally well by others. While such an approach has brought me some heartache, real heartache, it has also brought me 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.

The most competent authorities of the world have been against me. Ibsen 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 my mistakes and am content with my life. Sharing my stories with the world is a privilege. Having the title of ‘author,’ is not really who I am. I have been a husband and a father, sometimes a thug, often a drunk. Being published is no longer important, writing is. Until my dying day, I will be grateful.

Shakespeare himself would have wept at my life’s tragedy. At times, it felt like a creativity gone mad. I say that truthfully. We have all crossed boundaries, all attended the university of hard knocks. Mine has not been a successful life, far from it, until I found someone to love me back. I knew the cost of writing would be too high. I never stopped the effort.

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 my profession or the love I have for writing, but I can deny its pleasures for the finding or love and happiness in my life. I don’t recall formerly apologizing for my behavior all those years back? If not, I do so now. I’m so sorry to have missed so much of what should have been important to me.

Writing does not make anything easier. Writing has not been smooth, though it has been a pleasure. God knows I feel guilty about many things but none more than my 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 in my life, 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, quote: You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it — it’s the only way. End quote.

I want to respond to the author: Then 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.

But life is never for sure.

What shameful days am I trying to forget? Yes, people are curious to see beneath the mask, me the fool, the knave. But you, you were a galaxy of women. So many times we’d pass by close. I was never a womanizer, so I never considered reveling in the universe of who you were, and I wanted to be in love… or at least know what passed for love in the eyes of the world.

Instead, I found that which most of the world is still looking. But tragedy was always hiding in some midnight place.

Pain never hides, it haunts. It haunts me to this day. Dear God, King Arthur, and Merlin, please let her love. Let her become a beautiful, delicate woman in love with a knight who has broken every tournament lance in his quest to be the one to choose her, and none other.

There is no excuse for not letting you know that I love you still. The fact is you are the very closest, the very dearest and most loved. You hold and will always hold that position.

The December Tournaments will be frightening in intensity. Love, we all know, is full of collateral beauty. There are those who believe and those who will never. I wonder why my broken heart, why the indecency of what I have suffered, the love, too. I could know you, for you are truly beautiful, even if you can sometimes fill a sky with storms. I know, poetic words for a sensible woman…but who are you that there is nothing of value in my written word.

It’s out there, somewhere. Some need, 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 that was once her love. I know I’m lost to her, having been given up on, and so the exploration begins to somehow live without her.

Perhaps there can never be a past life, as indeed I will never live beyond my future life. What is happening now is what I have, there can be no more, either I grasp it and hold it dear to me, or I 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.

I want to offer her to the world. I want to let the world see how beautiful and strange and profound her love was. I have no other way of explaining my life. That is so odd. There is no tactful way of saying this, but she had no idea how long I had been searching.

I have the courage to accept not being loved…

but not to stop loving.