doubt .

too lonely old souls -

connecting from afar

taste of youthful magic -

aging into a mature reflection;

a passion deepened and tender

waking to the unfamiliar -

a quilt unraveling, delicate

fabric tattered in the breeze -

threadbare fragments remain

the world dances about -

in an awkward rhythm,

familiar people tiptoe around;

elsewhere beckons - - -

yet this was once there.

never the same river -

now totally off-course

our parade knee deep -

in flood waters

words just tokens -

pained in their disguise

what was once -

tainted by review

nauseous from this -

amusement park of emotion

happiness and pleasure lost -

uncertain where they’ve

been found before - - -

symbolizing familiarity -

two rings of gold and tarnish

the power of two beaten -

by the strength of will

standing on opposite sides -

of the same point of view

casting doubt toward -

the circling tides of absolutes

two lonely soldiers -

returning from the war

wounded, empty, and scarred,

surrendering to the intoxication -

of the current moment.

too fragile

endless metaphor
my preferred beast -
to harness the vague
intangible reminder
of days passé.

clarified myopia -
my future recipe
to handle the now
in retrospect.

hateful wind -
a brilliant extreme
for collapsing it all.
world upturned -
this human disease
knows no bounds.

hands left empty -
fragile flesh marinated
in sorrow and regret.

on invisibility

Lying in bed, just like Brian Wilson did
Well, I’m lying in bed just like Brian Wilson did . . .
So, I’m lying here, just staring at the ceiling tiles
And I’m thinking about what to think about.
-Barenaked Ladies, “Brian Wilson”

I shared a duet of that song with the wife a few weeks back. Given everything I have been working through and contemplating of late, it stirs up thoughts about isolation and becoming invisible within one’s own life.

A couple nights ago I was clearing out my old Yahoo e-mail account as a final exercise to completely commit to the far superior Gmail. As pointless an exercise as it might seem to some, I wrapped up my general deletions and forwards process with the extended task of unsubscribing myself from all of the newsletters I was receiving.

Until I went through message-by-message I didn’t realize how many I’d joined and let pile up. Doing so gave me this strange satisfaction. In fact I peculiarly felt weight pulled from my shoulders. In some way I see all of those newsletters I was un-tethering myself from as a means to reconfigure my identity. Interests, causes, hobbies, and such do seem to be part of the recipe of self. It connects in my mind.

Now let me backtrack for a moment here. For the past several months I have given myself the opportunity to disconnect while remaining vaguely connected, hiding under the safe little bubble of “invisible” in gchat and on Facebook, leaving my phone on vibrate or silent, and on and on.

These were the concrete actions of someone who was holding in emotional pain, evidence of tectonic shifts of personal change, and damming up cathartic geysers. I found different versions of self-prescribed desert island isolation. Perhaps driven by survival instinct, or more plainly just hunting for whatever chance I could to quiet down the bevy of voices and the general cacophony of life to try and hear my own.

But as I write I recognize an excess of past tense, as I crane my neck to see the distant wreckage disappearing behind me. I can feel myself stretching in positive ways, pulling my theoretical bear out of its wintery hibernation, or as Gloria Estefan offered: I feel I’m coming out of the dark. It’s all future from here on out.

And I think about the thought of being an empty shell. This is no doubt an exaggeration, but it does evoke a lot of the true feeling. Maybe life just reached an inadvertent dead end or a chance roadblock. An empty canvas, a clean slate, or whatever you might want to call it is a wonderful opportunity. Having a fresh start opens up endless possibility and I intend to take it!

existential crisis

. . . But I suppose I am getting ahead of myself here.

The last nine months of my life have flowed through me like the flood waters following a tsunami. All of the extreme good and bad that have swallowed me haven’t left me much opportunity to breathe until now.

Words haven’t been expelled from my fingers in complete phrases and most have been left unconstructed. For someone who has spent a long time identifying himself as a writer there has been an unsettling loss for words. One exception perhaps is the occasional rambling left, unsupervised collecting figurative dust within the archival collection of unpublished blogs.

It’s these little morsels that tell the bigger story in my mind of this bipolar timeframe my life has labored through. Metaphorically speaking, I feel I reached new personal heights and quelled within surprising lows during this time. I have seen the uncontrolled burn of once beautiful landscape and saw shoddy temporary tenements built in its place.

Back in October things were rich with excitement, creativity, and passion! On camera I was piecing together spare moments from one of my strongest screenplays for use in a promotional trailer as well as seeing the first sparks of what would become a very successful local stage play. I was starting to find myself in a zone of collective artistic energy I hadn’t felt the warmth of previously. At last the building blocks in my life were starting to look like something vaguely recognizable as a finished product.

As a counter-balance, after closing my held-over play at the start of February instant karma seemed to kick me in the ass as I found myself involved in the “Man of La Mancha” (ala Terry Gilliam’s famed non-production) of theatrical messes as well as within deep mental brooding and emotional anguish I’d never known the likes of. This began to present me with the belief that my life had become little more than an arbitrary mess. Looking around at my life, everything appeared to be a complete accident. I don’t mean an accident waiting to happen, but non-contemplated choices and spurious whims played out.

When the rug is pulled out from under you in regular life, it makes you much more impressed by that old magician trick involving the table cloth and those fancy settings. The real world doesn’t work like that, because in truth all of the things in your life tumble to the ground and you scramble to grab for the ones that mean the most, the ones that you’re most likely to pull out of a fire.

Not surprisingly in times like these, I am again reminded of a favorite “Northern Exposure” episode. Chris Stevens puts it like this: “I've been here now for some days, groping my way along, trying to realize my vision here. I started concentrating so hard on my vision that I lost sight. I've come to find out that it's not the vision; it's not the vision at all. It's the groping. It's the groping, it's the yearning. It's the moving forward. I think Kierkegaard said it oh so well, 'The self is only that which it's in the process of becoming.'”

extraneous, i

There’s that safe old expression about waking up one day only to look in the mirror to see an unfamiliar face staring back. I contend there’s a different version of the story that involves getting hit by a figurative train only to survive to find whatever you once were propelled into the air several hundred feet. The old identity crashes to the ground into a million tiny pieces, offering up nothing the least bit salvageable. That shell of a person that remains has a sense memory for what once filled it and clambers to retrieve some semblance of what is recalled, but even the familiar pair of old shoes don’t quite fit right anymore. None of the steps they used to take feel appropriate, nor do any of the paths they have been travelling along.

The shell that I have become feels unfamiliar and extraneous. I have disappeared into the ether, but still retain the consciousness of whoever I was before. Sure, I too expect to know myself when I peek at the mirror, but am still surprised at my hairline, that extensive forehead, and these eyes that are starting to play tricks on me. Perhaps I have aged out of my own existence. Whatever I was before seems not to matter anymore. I have given up practically everything that interested me before. I don’t have the time or crave the time for it. I don’t know if I do anything to suit my own desires anymore. I only seem to choose things that boost, inspire, encourage, and please other people in someway. And that’s presuming a lot since I really feel incapable of maintaining any of my myriad relationships anymore. I just don’t have the energy to keep up with all of these people, their problems, or their minutiae. I feel like a pawn for everyone else to move around and place into whatever role they choose, or more significantly whatever roles are left over after they’ve chosen someone else in the place I thought meant for me.

I don’t think I really have a purpose or utility. For sometime I was a collection of things that represented life lived and that old proof of life. I have tried to whittle these down and focus more on memories as indicative of where I’ve been and what I’ve accomplished. This worked well for a while and I was even told I had a terrific memory. Now it seems as if erasing the past is the way to play this game. Looking back is all I get, however. As I search for a job I must constantly look backward to seize moments and phrases from thoughts and actions long gone to try and shine on paper. I do start to wonder, given the list of details about who I am, what I’m interested in, and the like, if I don’t sound more like someone I don’t know than my self.

last waltz

Thirty some odd years ago Billy Joel wrote "life is a series of hellos and goodbyes - I'm afraid it's time for goodbye again." Over the past couple months I have grown more and more cognizant of the truth in these words as the winter months have brought with them harsh endings and meaningful transition. Out of this change and with the slow dance into spring I have stammered to stir up my own proverbial pitcher of lemonade.

Until a couple of months ago my wife and I had been involved in a five year friendship with another married couple. Things took a turn about three years ago when the first of several major issues began to mar an otherwise enjoyable, comfortable situation. The discomfort these issues introduced slowly created a cancer on the relationship that started to manifest itself in passive aggressive behavior and the once seemingly normal friendship began to become one maintained out of guilt and obligation. As time wore on I began to pull back from the situation, dislodging my emotional connection and removing all but feigned interest, I began to better see some of the psychologically abusive behavior we'd become prey to. Efforts to continue the friendship in altered and less frequent ways showed themselves fruitless and things fully fizzled out two months ago with the simple return of a house key.

The weekend spring arrived this year was jarring and emotionally charged; full of finales and farewells. My wife and I bid adieu to our slight Florida winter with a dinner party focused around chili and hot spiked cider. My sister-in-law packed up a truck and moved away after three years rife with temporary triumphs and unavoidable heartbreaks. And finally, a close friend and complicated kindred spirit held a final hurrah upon selling his house, which is one step in a short list of motions toward his setting off to discover the world. And it is within all of these sea changes that I found myself face-to-face with my own urging for rebirth and renewal after the darkening winter. There's a classic "Northern Exposure" episode called "Spring Break" that portrays the heightened libidos and altered states of the quirky town's residents as the long winter's ice builds up metaphoric tension before officially breaking and releasing everything out of its staid, wintery cocoon. One subplot of this episode involves an unexpected rash of small electric theft - quite the anomaly for the little town. In the end, the culprit spells out his rationale for the crime as a reminder of our primal roots and that the world is chaotic and unsafe.

Often times, life grows stagnant. Stagnation doesn't take much effort, after all. If it's not about remaining involved in the present, moving forward, and evolving than what's the point of waking up in the morning. Sometimes all our lives need a kick in the theoretical butt. Like Anais Nin said: "Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death." Maybe this is about breaking out of the office prison to be within the freedom of the open road, or maybe it's about moving home again to find out who you've become while you were away, or maybe it's about sifting aside the cold embers of an aging relationship to build up a new fire or passion. Whatever the case, poke yourself a little more out of that shell and open your eyes....