Music | Life | Living | Learning | Love
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Reasons
Moving from boyhood into adult life, some things were harder to understand. For example, flying aeroplanes never filled that space in my heart of wanting to work with Dad. Do Dad stuff. It didn’t compensate for the loneliness of not growing up under his wing and becoming a man that way.
Instead, I spent time determining where he might be, what about the weather, where he’d go, and when.
There were no answers.
There were never any answers, so I made them up. That was my first lesson about becoming a man: if someone cannot give you an answer, they’ll make one up.
I finally let Dad go because I had no desire to keep feeling that want. I saw him differently as I became as tall as he; his eyes said everything about him. The man could not own a secret. I asked him once if he ever got lonely on the seas. “I don’t get lonely anymore, just alone,” he said. I understood the difference when I found myself in a cockpit.
Loneliness is like walking next to the sea, looking back and hoping to see another set of footprints in the sand. Alone, however, is walking on the sand, accepting that the sea will leave no evidence of you being there.
In truth, I’m not anyone more than I imagine myself to be, less than my friends or therapists believe, only a boy growing up hallucinating with the idea of being in love and never properly woken up.
2
I remember I bought you panties in Victoria’s Secret after first holding them up in the shop, trying to work out how they should look on you. It was your birthday. A young assistant inquired if I needed help.
I’ve never hidden from love, only life. I’m not a shy person, but standing in front of a woman after she’s first listened to my friends tell her stories, hearing the exaggerations, the nonsense spoken, I wanted to gather up all her assumptions, as many there are as those summers that have forgotten my shadow, and make a fire with decades of memories and set light to it on the shore.
Like everyone else, I lived never imagining the indecency of what was to come. Any more than a family taken apart by a mentally ill person with an AR15 because, for those people, there is nothing of value in my written word or a prayer spoken.
3
Will I ever get it right? I bury my face into a towel and feel my heart aching for all I’ve failed to see, to learn, but what if we have four or five lives or 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.
I never gave thought to where I was going or with whom. I was running. Things change, shadows stay, and memories are never so old they cannot dart down cliffs like butterflies, grow like marigolds, or dazzle like dandelions. Hurry up, then, hold my hand; we’ve still so much to do.
4
Sometimes, I wonder if I’m in a dream of life or simply on a journey into self-expression.
I peer into the dark, wondering where I am.
First light slits a path across the sky above the ocean. Should a lonely man worry about the purity of his breath on any morning? I pick up my toothbrush and wonder why. 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, book shops.
Then, with another clap, offer her Constantinople.
But this 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 Picadilly Circus on his way to Trafalgar Square, he refuses to look sideways, walks past ten thousand years of mistakes, making his way to Mendocino.
5
Mine was not a successful life, far from it, until I found someone to love me back. I never stopped the effort.
Writing is a form of cheating, I create love over and over. I have often said of my work, “I am a professional liar.” It is true. Lies create the mysticism of the writer. I cannot deny my love for writing, any more than I can deny the success music brought, but what is it worth? I could easily deny the pleasure in exchange for love and happiness.
Someone I care about, though never met, wrote to me: You have too many talents for just one man.
I want to tell this lovely woman 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 or a talent. 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.
Charles Baudelaire wrote: Quote: You must always be drunk. That’s all there is to it — it’s the only way. End quote.
I can relate to this comment. When sober, I remember the violence, the savagery, beauty, ugliness, and yes, the glory, but then I 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. I was never a womanizer, only in my writing, and song lyrics, I wanted to be in love… or at least know what passed for love in the eyes of the world.
6
I have no other way of explaining my life. That is so odd. There is no tactful way of saying this, but I had no idea how to write — I just wrote.
I lived having the courage to accept that I may never be loved but not the courage to stop looking. I traced her smile with my index finger in spilt sugar, pushed her hair just so, sank into the ocean of her eyes, and slept to the sound of her breathing.
I was woken again.
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Thanks for reading.
