Taking a Chance on Truth

…I’m searching for the theme of these current days of mine. Various themes are suggested by this middle of the night mind of mine. The theme is a cocktail of sorts, a recipe, a formula; one not worth recreating in any kitchen or laboratory. It proves nothing and it’s hard to swallow. It’s life, I guess. Just life.

Sadness. Loneliness. Loss. Forgiveness. Abandonment. Discovery. Redemption.

My Life
Once upon a time there was a lonely woman who lived in the middle of a lot of people. She had grown to maturity through a million mistakes. Mistakes made every day, at every turn. And, at all those turns, she judged herself. There were the superficial judgments (too short, too thin, too dumb) and there were the more profound judgments (too insignificant, too misguided, too dangerous, too undesirable, too unforgivable).
Everyone knew her. And no one knew her. She knew she didn’t know herself.

Her Life in “The Oughts”
Wake up. Feed the dog, the cat, the fish, the birds. Take a short walk. Read the paper. Listen to the radio. Drink some tea or coffee. Check e-mail. Water the plants. Do some laundry. Take a shower. Get dressed. Pay bills. Go to work. Figure it out, figure it out. Try to figure it out. Keep going. Keep going. Keep trying to keep going. Smile. Pay attention. Say thank you. Say yes. Say no thank you. Say enough. Say too much. Say it again. Say it too quickly, too softly, too harshly. Say can you see…

It dawns on me…
Tomorrow and tomorrow…petty pace…last syllable…out…out…walking shadow…poor player…fools…dusty death…no more…

Something like that. Something like nothing. Nothing special.

“I am special, ” the ingénue says in the Fantastiks. “Please God please” she implores, “don’t let me be normal.” But she is normal. She is some kind of normal. She is aspects of normal. Normal says, “Don’t let me be normal.”

I’m thinking about everyone. Right now, in the middle of the night, having over-eaten and having drunk a bit of wine, I’m thinking about the everyone-ness of us. Everyone. The people who are lonely and the people who don’t know that they are lonely. And the lonely people who don’t know that the people they know are lonely people. No one says so. No. Say it isn’t so.

There are lonely people who appear…Wait. Wait a minute. I am no Eleanor fucking Rigby. I’m not lonely. I’m simply alone. No, not simply alone. Profoundly alone. And sad. But not the kind of sad that can be erased with a song or a few comforting words. And not the kind of sad that can be fixed with a fortune or a soul mate. Profoundly and unalterably sad.

Telling the Truth
Speaking truth to loneliness. It’s okay. It is, after all, next to Godliness. Loneliness is.
Lonely as a cloud. Lonely like a cloud: just vapor and fluff, floating in and around, changing shape, blown by this and that, affected/not affected by this and that. Formed. Unformed. Uninformed. Uniformed.
See…don’t see.
See the shining sea!
Sea of possibilities. See the possibilities.
Sea of change. Change of scene. Scene of destruction.

See, this is a place in my mind, a moment in time. In impatient syncopation.
A bit out of step. But in the flow.
Too sensitive. Too insensitive. What’s the difference? Both are problematic.
The best becomes the worst. The inside is the outside. Still and always, the energy is on the line where opposites meet. Where they fight or join or retreat or disappear. Where the enemy becomes the friend. Where the weak inherit the earth.

I live on the line between old and young, between dark and light, between evil and good, between transparent and opaque. In my solitude, I curse myself, I amuse myself, I forgive myself, I encounter myself. I erase myself and re-draw myself.
In encountering myself, I discover that I feel disappointed. That is all there is. This is all there is. It all means something. It all means nothing. All and Everything. Being and Nothingness. It’s all been said and read and written and forgotten. Before. And after. And here I am in the middle of the night, tap, tap, tapping on the bones of the misbegotten. Tugging on my own bones. Stretching. Longing to figure out the unfigureoutable. Finding myself in the darkness of my knowing. It is over. It is beginning. It is continuing. It is continuing to be over. It is beginning to continue.