Singles Ad

"More about me in a minute. Here's what I am looking for in a partner: 

You:

Have done and continue to do the work, and you know what that means without my having to explain it. 

Are in recovery or at least understand what that means. 

Are radical left-progressive, down to destroy the patriarchy, and are passionately, unabashedly feminist. 

Have a spiritual program, spiritual values and principles you live by, but you are an atheist and not religious. Have a sense of the divine mystery, the sacred and the larger universe.  

Are avidly sex positive, have largely freed yourself from sexual shame, and know what you want and are not afraid to ask for it and unabashedly love the male body. 

Have worked through your past heartbreak, are not bitter, and have a generally positive, kind, generous and loving disposition and do not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it

Take good care of yourself but are not a fanatic—you have worked out most of your body dysmorphia, you eat well, you're fit, but you are not controlling and judgmental about food. You are comfortable in your own skin.

Can let go and be hedonistic without guilt or shame, at a gelato shop for example, and if you have food rules, you never, ever try to impose them on other people or shame them for what they like to eat

Have zero interest in head games, power trips, manipulation, duplicity or gaslighting and will not tolerate same from anyone, least of all your partner

Are capable of authentic feeling, do not try to kill your heart, are not afraid to have an emotional experience, and generally do not switch your feelings off suddenly, and are somewhat sentimental around memories, music, etc.

Are not prone to ghosting, tethering, caspering or any other form of disappearance without cues and communication. You've worked hard on developing adult communication skills and you respect the needs of your partner in regard to communication and expect the same from him 

Like your job and feel you have found right livelihood

Have mostly accepted the difficult lesson that happiness is not constituted by external factors

Are absolutely not interested in a partner as a project for improvement and know how to love and accept your partner exactly as he is and expect the same from him

Have a tender, kind, compassionate and empathetic heart BUT you also have a dark and twisted sense of humor, you love memes, you revel in the absurdity of human behavior and life on Earth, but your humor never punches down

Love reading and being read to

Are capable of being deeply moved by art of all kinds and regularly are, and love enthusiastically sharing what moves you and are open to what moves your partner

Enjoy massage, giving and receiving

Are a good cook and enjoy also being cooked for

Are into all kinds of music and love hearing new things and are open minded about aesthetically challenging music and generously share also new music that you find that you love; you like having music on in the shared space

Appreciate a beautiful, well kept living space and acknowledge your partner's labors to that end, and you are capable of sharing space generously

Need lots of alone time and have no problem granting the same to your partner

Are not really interested in a partnership that constantly has to be "worked on" yet also can step up and get real about work on the partnership when it is necessary

Are an excellent conversationalist and get turned on by great conversation

Love travel of all kinds but in particular love road trips, hiking, backpacking and camping, both car camping and more primitive forms, yet also love luxury hotel rooms, or cheap louche motels

Are deeply, profoundly moved by wilderness and the beauty of the world

Love cities also

(if a mother of children of any age) absolutely do not believe in corporal punishment, are or were a skilled listener and respecter of the personhood of your children, and now have a generally relaxed and positive relationship with them usually free from drama (within reason)

Are a fierce accomplice for LGBTQ rights, the rights of all marginalized people, have absolutely no confusion about the difference between gender and sex 

Are not into conspiracy theories, do not use phrases like "Big Pharma," are pro vaccine, not anti-GMO, understand science, are not convinced "there's no difference between the two parties," and generally have a sane, sound and proportional set of views of reality

Acknowledge without hesitation the reality of white privilege, white male supremacy and institutionalized racism and are generally capable of receiving a call out without bristling

Have close female friends and are capable of having close male friends with whom you do not form romantic or sexual attachments

Are not still enmeshed in your family system and have healthy, resilient and self-protective boundaries around toxic family members, if you have any

Are enthusiastic about your partner and enjoy introducing him to people you care about and have good boundaries about how you speak about him with friends and family and expect the same from him

Enjoy a full range of self-appearance, from glam to sweats, and have no qualms about performing femininity, yet are not preoccupied

Are DONE with your exes, whether friends with them or not, and do not speak bitterly or critically of them (unless they were abusive, in which case you also have found or are finding a way to heal from that)

Are committed to taking care of any emotional, mental or physical health issues you may have in a responsible and self-loving way

Enjoy receiving gifts and compliments

Appreciate a man who is attentive, generous, kind, supportive, passionately committed to you and present

Have a healthy relationship with social media and, in particular, do not use it to manipulate your partner or arouse jealousy, competition or weird and vague flirtation and you have excellent boundaries with male creepers

Are well educated but not pretentious

Are loyal and trusting when it is warranted and expect the same of your partner, yet are capable of acknowledging your own insecurities and seeking reassurance, as well as responding supportively and lovingly to your partner's occasional need for reassurance

Respond to the emotional pain of your partner with empathy and presence and do not attempt to invalidate or gaslight

Never, ever mock, tease, tear down or otherwise "joke" in a way that belittles your partner either to him, or in his presence, or with others when  he isn't there, and expect the same respect and courtesy from him

Know how to fight fair and practice that skill, and use I-statements or at least generally look for your own experience in a conflict

Can revel in tacky and kitschy humor but also have a refined sense of what is funny

Do not engage in revenge behavior and generally do not keep score or engage in bookkeeping behavior around emotions or events

Know that love is action, not words, and want to have a partnership of love in action, not words

***

There's more, but that's a start. Give yourself one point for each. Do not reply if your score is below 46. Thanks for your time." 

ah romance....

The interesting thing is that some of the women I've been with have reflected most of these aspects, as idealistic and maybe unrealistic as the list might seem. The most recent, almost all, I am amazed to discover. I spoke the list as voice to text while I was driving, and just went for all of the highest characteristics I am looking for in a partner. No wonder I connected so strongly with some. Yet, it's not as if each item on my list above is equal to all the others- there are some deal breakers. I never, ever want to be switched off, ghosted, tethered, caspered or otherwise fucked with, ever again, for example. Also, of course, I can be and have been flexible. Especially as I've gotten older, and recognized my own glaring character defects, I have developed a capacity to be much more accepting and resilient with others. 

But, along with the mantra "I am not your man," there's an emerging sense of this: It takes a lot to make me yours. 

I am not your man

Would be, in half a heartbeat, systole or diastole, wouldn't matter. Lub or dub, fuckin' bring it. Tomorrow, still. 

But AM not. 

I have no idea why simple re-recordings of things, sayings, repeated affirmations, can have such a salutary effect, but, when the time is right, they definitely can. I realized somewhere after Minnesota on this trip that I had been habitually reacting as if I belonged to someone, and, painfully, as if that person belonged or at least should belong to me. I was reacting like someone spoken for. I had no conscious idea I was reacting that way, in the least. In fact, if anyone had asked me prior to when it dawned on me I would have denied it roundly, flatly, crookedly and spherically or all the other ways one can deny whatever the fuck. 

Yet, when I realized it, it was plain as day. 

So I decided to start saying, rather fiercely, in my mind (and occasionally out loud): I AM NOT YOUR MAN. I might, for example, flash on some exquisite memory and instyead of tumbling and melting I'd brace up and say I AM NOT YOUR MAN. 

It started to really help a lot. I am not spoken for, I belong to no one, I am no one's this or that, I am free, free, free. This is the reality of the situation, quite without regard to my aching heart or yearning feelings. The plain fact is, I ain't nobody's. I AM NOT YOUR MAN. 

Would I love to be, well shit yes. That's obvious. But it is not on offer. And so it fucking is not. I am not. Yours. Not. Your man. Not. 

I began to play with it a lot for several days—predictably, this also followed on  the dream "It's time," that I posted a couple days ago. What does it mean to not be anyone's man? It's a wild and wonderful way to look at things. I need or have to answer to no one whatsoever. Shit, I don't even have a cat, or a dog, or a fish. I clearly have been terrified of being 100% free, reminding me of the David Byrne song, The Moment of Conception:

I was born without a conscience
Full of freedom, full of nonsense
From the mountains to the beaches
Eat the apples, steal the peaches
Will you be this wild child's lady?
Will you carry me to safety?
Lock me up & take me home
I don't wanna be free
Goin' crazy - on my own

It's not where I wanna be




One of the songs that resonated powerfully for me when I was this person's man (to whatever degree I ever was, given the deal) was Leonard Cohen's "I'm Your Man." So it seemed to funny to imagine an entirely different song. 

I am not your man. 

A weird side effect of this mantra was that I uncovered a lot of entanglements and attachments that went way, way back. I caught a glimpse of remnants of still being the man of many women. Stuck here, hooked there, obligated here, mired there. I started to go through every romantic and sexual relationship I have ever had and realized I had bailed on a great many, or they had bailed on me, and real, convincing, strong-boundaried closure was *still lacking* in some cases. So I AM NOT YOURS  became about my entire romantic and sexual history, not just the heartbreak. I reconstructed my number (51, if anyone is asking) and realized there is still a lot of unfinished business in a lot of those. But I am not your man is helping, is resolving, setting boundaries where I have been reluctant to do so in the past. Or where I thought I did. It's especially clear to me that simply breaking up with someone, and even forgetting them, absolutely does not constitute closure. 

One thing I am going to ask and try to ascertain intuitively if I ever get attached again: is the woman done with her exes? Not- are they done with her. Or does she hate them or talk shit about them, actually a sign of NOT being done. But is she free, free, free. Is she NOT ANYONE'S WOMAN. Because that is what I want: I want a free woman who does not belong to any goddamned anyone. And I think a lot of "single" people are not free. And of course, a lot of married or involved people are also not free, although de facto it may be that people in couples are more free than single people in some ways. 

Anyway, I am beginning to revel in the possibilities of not owing any goddamned anyone any goddamned anything. I am so deeply attached to belonging to a woman. I like being someone's man. But all of the open ended mess of my long sexual and romantic life has also meant that I have not really been both feet in, all in, all for one other woman, really, at any time since The Lovejoy, and the most recent. Why the most recent, I bet, is only because I had already begun to get final closure on all the shit from decades of fucking shit. so to speak. Bad timing, to not protect myself. But it was as I have already said a gazillion times, what it was. 

Leaving this I AM NOT YOUR MAN meditation with Patti Smith.

I was a wing in heaven blue
soared over the ocean
soared over Spain
and I was free
needed nobody
it was beautiful
it was beautiful
I was a pawn
didn't have a move
didn't have nowhere
that I could go
but I was free
I needed nobody
it was beautiful
it was beautiful
and if there's one thing
could do for you
you'd be a wing
in heaven blue
I was a vision
in another eye
and they saw nothing
no future at all
yet I was free
I needed nobody
it was beautiful
it was beautiful
and if there's one thing
could do for you
you'd be a wing
in heaven blue
and if there's one thing
could do for you
you'd be a wing
in heaven blue
and if there's one thing
could do for you
you'd be a wing

in heaven blue

A Taxonomy of Loneliness

The road trip provided a lot of time to reflect (fortunately, not a whole lot of awful rumination, but mostly productive realizations), and one of the areas I thought about a lot was loneliness. There's a certain type of loneliness that follows the uncommon experience of feeling truly seen, truly understood and "gotten," that is particularly piercing. I think that I have spent the vast majority of my time feeling lonely without really knowing it. I think one really knows it subsequent to amazing connections that come along and then have to be severed. 

I was reflecting mostly on how important it is to move through loneliness in order to get to solitude. Solitude is a lovely experience for me. I am not with anyone, but I don't feel anything lacking at all. Nothing is missing. I am just enjoying my own company. There were some much needed stretches of true solitude on the trip. But most often, in order to get to solitude, I have to pass through loneliness. And it's very tempting to avoid loneliness via distraction, staying busy, hanging with people I really don't like all that much, etc. I think one of the great areas of pain in my life that I have tried to medicate away has been loneliness. It's unfortunate, since, when I do arrive at solitude, I enjoy it. 

I have at times stayed in relationships simply to avoid loneliness, but of course, and sadly ironically, I have felt even more lonely in those relationships. Nothing reinforces loneliness more than hanging with people who just do not get me. No matter how fine they may be, how funny or interesting, or attractive, or whatever, if I am using them to stave off loneliness, I will always, without exception, end up feeling even more lonely. 

I think loneliness unfolds in each of the domains. Emotional loneliness, physical loneliness, intellectual loneliness and spiritual loneliness. Emotional loneliness is reinforced for me when I try to express what I am feeling and get met with gaslighting, denial, resistance, reassurance, indifference. Spiritual loneliness is quite common in recovery groups, since I rarely feel met regarding my concept of a greater power, I'm an atheist, and so on. Physical loneliness is of course felt in the body in so many ways. Touch deprivation, tension, emptiness. Intellectual loneliness is, for me, that disappointment that comes from someone just not getting how I think, what I value, how I see the world, or even just missing a cultural reference. In particular, intellectual loneliness can be reinforced around humor—when someone just doesn't get why something is funny, and I find it incredibly hilarious. 

Anyway, avoiding intimacy is a strategy for trying to avoid loneliness too, oddly enough. Solitude, for that matter, is simply intimacy with myself, a daunting prospect when there are thoughts I am resisting or emotions I am trying not to feel. 

There's also just the overall, cosmic, existential loneliness of being a person on this planet. I don't vibe very well with others who do not know this feeling very well. I have trouble with hard core extroverts who are always sunny. One hears in many rooms of recovery that the feeling of not fitting in, of being unsuited for life, of feeling alone even from a very young age is very common. I definitely had it. I recall when my first drink hit my brain and it absolutely felt like I had found a way to dissolve that awful isolation. I recall when my first romantic and sexual experiences arrived in the exact same way. But of course, the sustainable, reliable experience is to learn to accept loneliness, or to pass through the pain of loneliness to solitude, or to show up for intimacy with someone else to whatever degree is authentically possible. 

It's Time

I had a dream the other night that shifted a lot of energy for me. Not in a welcome way at all, at least not at first, but it seems to be helping more over time. And it absolutely required the vast empty spaces of the wild and epic road trip (more about that later) in order to manifest. 

The light was very bright—really, Santa Fe autumnal afternoon light. A warm room, just flooded with light, and with almost everything in the room white also. She and I are sitting quite close on a blue sofa, and the piercing detail of her wearing exactly what she was wearing the first time we spent time together stands out. We're facing forward, holding hands. It's very sweet and innocent. It has a very heavy, thrumming and ritual energy to it. 

A light, gentle voice chimed from the air, the light: "It's time."

No, I thought. I don't want to say goodbye. I don't want it to be time. 

But she looked at me and said, "I know, but it's time."

I said, "I don't want to say goodbye."

She had a warm, glinting, diamond kind of light in her eyes. Tear moistened. 

She simply repeated, "It's time." Kindly, gently. 

And we drew our hands apart, and sat another second next to each other. 

"I don't want to say goodbye," I said again. I felt perhaps nine years old. She also seemed very young. The whole situation was sweet and gentle, childlike and innocent. She nodded. 

The voice rang out of the air again- "It's time."

I thought to myself, why, why is it time. I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't want to say goodbye. 

But she drew herself up, and off she walked, out of the space we were in. I sat breathing heavily on the sofa. The light was bright. There was a kind, shimmering, but also sharp and sword-like energy. 

"I don't want to say goodbye," I said out loud, to nothing. And I woke up with a start, tearful in my tent. 

What stays with me especially is that soft, dry, decisive, yet almost lingering moment when we drew our hands apart- a slight swishing sound of skin on skin. And the moment after when we still sat side by side, breathing, still waiting.  

I've integrated enough of the dream to know that the main reason why letting go has been so incredibly difficult for me is that I simply have not wanted to. It became very clear to me that if I had wanted to, I would have by now. Or at least I would have to a greater degree. 

I think the dream is something deep in me finally accepting it. Finally able to sit with it, against my will, against my hopes. Finally able to draw that hand away, and have there be that space. The dream definitely told me that I had been faking letting go, and yet still was hoping, was holding that hand. But my heart knows, thanks to the dream, there's nothing I can do about it but accept the way things are. 

I am amazed that I have been so stubborn. That I have not wanted to hear it. To acknowledge it and realize the weird and mysterious ineluctability of it. The way it felt fated that we were drawn together, it feels fated that we have to say goodbye. I'll never understand it, probably. I still don't want to say goodbye, really. But at least now I know—the dream world told me—It's time. 

Angry about anger

On the other side of letting myself feel anger, I sometimes experience anger that I'm angry. Yet another quirky facet of being Percy. In this case, after a few days of being angry a la my previous post and then some, yesterday I started feeling like I was done, and I began to angrily accept (yes that's possible) the entire deal. "Hang on one goddamned second, honcho. Being angry about selling yourself short *sells yourself short*," I realized. 

An actual pic of me driving the rental car across Montana

I am 100% glad everything happened exactly as it did, which is maybe the greatest gift of getting real about anger. Well, there is one regret: I would have (haha meaningless) let go sooner, if I could have (haha meaningless). I did what I was able to do the way I was able to do it, when I was able to do it, and that is that. Frankly, I would not change anything at all, regardless of how painful many of these passages have been. 

The level of grief and anger I feel about the word "depression" being misspelled on this flow chart LITERALLY cannot be expressed but some day I will find acceptance about it if it kills me. 

Onward to the Oregon coast and a campsite I snagged for the night. This road trip has been incredible in many ways. At some point, a retrospective will be posted here, but probably not until I get to Arizona. I still have no clue what is next in my life, but I do know this: unless I die in a fiery car crash along the Pacific coast or something, I will be sleeping next to the ocean tonight. How could I find fault given this reality? Lovers come and go, crushes are a dime a dozen for a crush addict, partners are fallible and fickle, but the ocean is always there, flood or fury, peace or halcyon days. As my first AA sponsor used to say, when I was in grave doubt and cynicism, "What part of the wave isn't 100% ocean?" 

Very Well

Conundrum: how to move gracefully through a situation where someone is very well without you, and you are genuinely happy for them, but you feel you are not very well without them? "How are you?" "I am very well, thank you, how are you?" "Oh I am very well, also, yes, yes, very well indeed, just great."

No, honestly, I am not well. I am not well at all. It's not anyone's fault other than my own, and no one other than I has to or can do anything about it. But plainly, I am not well. Not even somewhat well, let alone very. 

I am in a stretch of life where I resist this fiercely. I don't begrudge others their happiness and the serenity that comes from having made a sensible and constructive decision. In fact, I completely understand and respect the decision and have wanted to behave accordingly. Admittedly, I even envy the decision somewhat, since I have never been able to either make that decision or be with anyone who would make it to stay with me. 

What I resist is the tendency in myself to fabricate a reciprocal wellness in order to stave off the only apparent alternative, which is that I have been deeply moved by and continue to grieve the loss of an experience and the other person has managed to find wellness. I want to be on equal footing. I especially feel angry about being pitied. It's not enough to be sad and grieving a loss, for me—I have to throw the kerosene of feeling like a pathetic loser onto the fire. My pride fucks me. 

I am not very well. My mind has not been a friendly or balanced environment on this trip. I think this is a direct reflection of my mental focus having been poured into the dissertation for months, and my regular meditation praqctice, which in some ways has not been constructive, but in fact, has been a way for me to supress emotions. 

Two years ago today, the day dawned in Ship Bottom, NJ, and I embarked on a risky and incredibly moving, beautiful adventure. (Yes, well, I betray myself mentioning that this is the "anniversary," as I had resolved not to acknowledge it, since I know or assume that it won't be acknowledged today or any other day by anyone other than I, Again, unilateral sentimentality fucking with me). Wise friends of mine warned that a). people rarely magically become available out of a situation that is fairly well cast in stone and b). there was no visible outcome to the adventure that would not hurt like a motherfucker. I did not and do not listen to these warnings of course. 

I meant every last word I said, I did not say any of it lightly, and still mean it. My truth in this regard doesn't sit well with the reality. Gone and dead, completely iced, or at least 100% unilateral, the declarations that were for a time reciprocal. Sadness, grief and tenderness is a beautiful thing by comparison. The anger at myself for having believed and having had hope and feeling like an idiot is, by comparison, acrid, acid, barren, scorching and bewildering. I understand where the other person is, at least I think I do. I get it. I have always gotten it. At least, I think I have always gotten it. 

And I, just want to feel you're there
And I don't want to have to share our love
I try, but I get overwhelmed
When you're gone I have no one to tell
And I, just want to feel you're there
And I don't want to have to share our love
I try but I get overwhelmed
All wrapped in cellophane, the feelings that we had



It has to be either or, for some people, at some times of life. This has been true for me in the past. It can't possibly have been real if the life chosen instead is the way things are. I know myself and trust myself 100% and know that when I discovered the truth of the encounter for myself, all of the vows and declarations were true for me. I'm also angry regarding the skepticism and cynicism of outsiders. The weird projections. The confusing dismissals. I guess, in general, I am finally just allowing myself to be angry. I was reading the chapter in Melody Beattie's Codependent No More about anger at the campsite at Lake Kabetogama in northern Minnesota and I realized I had not simply allowed my natural feelings of anger to move, to be acknowledged. 

I am often afraid that anger, in and of itself, simply as an emotion, has destructive power. I was raised with a mother and father who raged at will and I have not been skillful with anger myself. Of course, were I to act it out, in any of the ways I have in the past, it would be destructive. It has been. Anger when my feelings are hurt or I have sold myself out has often led to behavior about which I have had the biggest regrets and have had to make the most difficult amends. But the fact of it as a feeling won't be denied, simply because I am afraid of how I might act. And I am handling the anger well, not acting out, but expressing, in a way that respects the fact of the anger but also does not make it someone else's problem. I feel angry that I put all, (yes, all) of my emotional stock into an unavailable situation and didn't take care of myself, protect myself or take a stand for myself. It is proportional and natural to feel angry about these things. Anger is, in fact, the boundary emotion. It arises when violation has occurred, especially self-violation. 

I repeatedly ignored the plain fact that the demands of the situation on the other person often made it impossible for me to be heard and seen, whenever things were less than ideal. I made concessions and told myself I only needed to "handle my issues" myself and "stop bothering" the other person, in spite of being unable to "stop bothering" them. Here's the thing Percy old man: never, ever again put yourself into a position where being yourself is felt and judged by you as "bothering" someone else. Fuck that. As in oh my fucking goddamn it forever, fucking FUCK THAT. Not to put too fine a point on it.  

I feel also that, even when there was reciprocity, I kept myself in a situation that was not reciprocal. I understand the excellent reasons, yet I am angry at myself that I repeatedly put myself in that position. It's not the other person's "fault," it's my fault. I chose to exist in an imbalanced dynamic where I was taken for granted, where I was not able to be met. "Begging for scraps" is how the other person put it, and that was a gut punch and still hurts, and is one of those remarks that one remembers for the rest of one's memory-capable life, because it's so accurate a metaphor. I have the goal of understanding more clearly why I chose this and, eventually, accepting that I did and forgiving myself for pretty much chronically feeling abandoned for many months. I do get that one reason was how glorious the encounter was, and how deeply moved I was. And I do get that the other person also made concession after concession, at great personal risk practically and emotionally. In spite of getting all of it, I am angry and that is that.

I am beholden to no one and nothing at this time, so I have all the time and space I need (and maybe more than I need) to do all of this processing. I do acknowledge that this is a tremendous and rare gift. I think, soon, I will have to shift into externally directed focus. For now, here I am. 

To feel like a luxury item who would just as soon be forgotten by someone for whom one continues to have deep emotional attachment sucks. No matter if one understands why. To "still" be emotionally attached to someone who has successfully disentangled and moved on sucks. It makes no difference knowing that one "should" also disentangle. To be deeply ashamed to "still" be in love with someone who is flat out done, done, done sucks. No matter if one's feelings are honoring what is true for oneself, without regard to the truth of others. Trying to be done, done, done just because someone else is- not healthy. To be ashamed to have made a series of self-destructive choices that did not honor oneself or support one's worth and value sucks. It's bewildering. What was I thinking? To be processing the hurt feelings, anger and resentment, mostly toward oneself, that result from all of these choices is extremely unpleasant. The wide open spaces, break from the dissertation and weird nostalgia have all contributed to letting loose this anger. I'm glad it has space and all I have to do is talk about it, write about it. Let it move. I am done trying to manage this anger or hide it or talk myself out of it. I think once it does its natural thing and naturally subsides, as long as I continue to practice owning it and not acting out, I'll be in a better place. 

It could just as well have been 1000 years in one of the moments. Two years is nothing, two years is a long time. Tomorrow is a long time. 

Sunrise, July 13, 2017, Long Beach Island, NJ, from the unprotected balcony of the hotel room at the Drifting Sands. 

Madeleines

A hike up Brook Road, minding my own business, feeling a little bit free and light, and there's purple clover and Queen Anne's lace. 

I will look for you in old Honolulu
San Francisco, Ashtabula
You are going to have to leave me now I know
I'll see you in the sky above
In the tall grass, in the ones I love
You're gonna to make me lonesome when you go

Or the door to the deck is open, the Ten Mile River rushing on a darkening night and you record it "for no one in particular." But you do record and post it. And it gets one reaction from someone else. Or you wake in the middle of the night and the first thought is watching sleep, the slow rise and fall of the back, face turned away—fully clothed, a dark blue sweater, a scarf still on. You recall being glad to have made a space. 

Or you're at a restaurant and it's any restaurant you were at, not the one you are actually at. 

The night sky. Never shared. But still a push. The feeling of my own fingertips, steepling with my other fingertips. Impossible but the case. The moon in any phase. Rising, waxing, waning, since I'm always up before dawn now. I've seen the Moon in every state of light dress the past several months, even with one eye. 

Palms. Of the hand variety. 

Surely you'll stop recalling all of these random scenes. And you recall the dumb line "Don't call me Shirley," and you never did get to watch a dumb movie together. And that tumbles into Kate B's This Woman's Work:


All the things we should've said that I never said
All the things we should have done that we never did
All the things we should have given but I didn't
Oh darling make it go
Make it go away
Give me these moments
Give them back to me
Give me that little kiss
Give me your talking hands

This year another road trip. Pulling off in Arkansas. nothing on my mind. To a scuzzy gas station. Not a cloud on the horizon. Back up over the fairly high arcing bridge to the ramp to I-40 and there it is. You hadn't even realized it was the same place. But the thick humid green and the seemingly sweaty breathing trees and the little winding path- if it isn't the same spot, it's the same in one's mind. It might as well have happened. 

It was the strangest thing, back then, tumbling back west and falling so hard at the same time. Immolated. 

Yes, of course. 

As natural and necessary as any obvious thing. 

Yes, of course.

Summoned by petrichor: the rainbow over the hotel. One thing also starkly clear: one of those brilliant blue Santa Fe skies, high white clouds, having left the house, alone in my car, wondering, why am I leaving? I knew why, in all the ordinary ways, of course. But I'll never know why.

February, snow lined streets, ice in the air. coat and scarf, into the car, "What do you want to do? Where do you want to go?" "I don't know, anything really, anywhere, with you." "Let's go get married. Today."

Yes, of course. 

If and if and if. 

Every single meme is a madeleine. The litmus test is- is it good enough? Few are, so one settles for passable, most often. Every single thing that catches my attention feels like it goes out in that direction. It won't stay. It has to be shared. It reaches out that way no matter what I try to do about it. A lesson. 

Sometimes it gets tiresome and I feel angry, stupid, out of control, or just like a sucker. Not all of this again. She's gone, the decision was made, get the fucking fuck over it. But it is not under my control. It is what it is. Or I just get tired of being out of control. Too bad, I guess. Too bad. 

This is where easing into accepting myself exactly as I am comes in. Impossible. My unmediated reaction is to want to punch myself in the face until I shut up. 

These are all merely the G rated madeleines. A weltering world of G rated memories. The reminders that go all the way down the rating scale, never mind those. But I will say that sometimes one of those might flash like magnesium and drop me. I do consciously exert tremendous effort around those sometimes, just because they are the most impossible of all, and the disparity is too severe. I do have that defense operating sometimes.

Outside of time. We said "weirdling spectral time hops" as way of accounting for that strange feeling of being outside of the stream of time. It fits. I can hear somebody saying "yeah right, I think there's plenty of evidence that you're trapped in time like a dead bug in amber."

Ann Arbor sunrise

Traveling when you wish you could be with someone with whom you cannot be is a weird experience, with moments free and light and moments a rusty dagger. I think the strongest thing, second to the memories, is the wish to tell, to communicate, for experience to be shared, not only in the documentarian sense, but specifically with one who gets it. "They would love this, they would love that, they would love this, they would love that." Sometimes sweet and tender, sometimes fucking infuriating. "Shut the fuck up," I gently suggest to myself. 

But that is not an option. And the universe is reinforcing that, as the longer I am on the road, the more closed in silence and distance things have been. As if, in moving closer spatially, for each mile toward, three miles of metaphor are added between. Typical. 

I get the fierce urge to delete all of the above, to not express it, let alone "still" be in it. It's a flashing, sword-sharp resentment. Not rusty, but like surgical steel. But it's not lasting. And it's not to much avail anyway. It's been a wild and weird two years, or will have been, in three days. I don't claim to understand it. Not trying. 

Today, farther west, farther north. No matter where I go, there I am, and, for a starkly empty space, it's always weirdly, spectrally weirdling full. 

The family and the territory

Very challenging for me emotionally and spiritually to spend time with family. I find that it depletes me severely, and I need to space it out, have breathing room in between, and that it takes a long time to process afterwards. 

No one I know, just a pic of my sentiments

This latest visit has been no exception. The third annual summer rental car trip, scheduled pretty much identically to last year's, with the first stop being Allentown to see the brother who is two years older than I, his wife, and my parents, who live in an apartment my brother built out of the bottom floor of his house. My brother turns 60 in a couple weeks, my parents celebrate their 66th wedding anniversary, and they are 87 (father) and 86 (mother). 

Aspects that were difficult for me: 

The normal lifestyle, with its stable domesticity, pattern, routine, calm and composure but without much passion for anything. Living death is what it feels like to me. 

The infirm and frail constitution of both parents and to some degree my brother, with a constant sense of their physical limitations and suffering, the gradually but surely constricting necessities of their lives. 

My own inner turmoil, broken-hearted, lonely, ungrounded, feeling somewhat out of recovery, restless about the PhD and really wanting to just be the fuck alone or with people who get me. 

I am still largely unable to exercise much due to the eye situation, at least not the 5 km run I was putting in several times a week, and I'm really feeling the pent up bollix of imbalance as a result. Also, my family doesn't really eat the best food, so there's always a kind of dietary lag, carb crashes, mood swings, etc. 

Allentown and the Lehigh Valley in general, of course deeply evocative of my childhood and young adulthood, and usually not in a favorable way. PTSD responds to all of the memories and cues, including just the smell in the air, or fireflies, or the behavior of Pennsylvanians. Restless nights in hotels. Little sense of calm or space. 

Anyway, that's a partial list. First and foremost, my parents' condition was painful for me to witness, in an attached way. My father is hardly able to stand and walk on his own. He's extremely unsteady on his feet and has taken several falls lately. He also has trouble hearing, and his hearing aids don't work very well, so he's just sinking more and more into solitude, even with people around, and that really pushed my buttons. My mother is better physically, but very frail also. Her biggest challenges are emotional. I can tell she is deeply unhappy and quite anxious and worried all of the time. She puts on a chipper front, but I can feel her loneliness, worry, anxiety about her future, about health, about my father, about her living situation. Both of them are in a stubborn place where they just seem not ready to accept the true nature of their condition. 

Their main source of support is my sister in law, and they do not get along with her. There is almost constant tension as a result. My sister in law is direct and not given to a lot of niceties, and my parents have always been extremely sensitive and proud people who will not be told what to do. They were used to a high degree of autonomy before they moved into my brother and sister in law's house, and as their infirmities have increased they have been increasingly dependent there. It's a tense situation sometimes. 

Up here at my sister's, in a beautiful segment of Sullivan County NY near the Delaware River, I have a lot more time to myself. My sister is still recovering from extensive treatment for cancer of the larynx, which resulted in her losing 80 pounds. She is in remission, but she doesn't yet seem well. She seems querulous, easily irritated, anxious to a high degree and terribly unhappy. One of her habits is to make everything incredibly complicated, and I try to put her at ease and assure her that I need and want absolutely nothing, but she always goes to great lengths as a host and gets worked up about dinner plans and so on. I sometimes just go out and pick up dinner without even telling her or her husband and then just message her "hey, I got dinner!", and that has gone over okay a couple times. But it also has angered her, as she prepares a lot of food without talking about it as well. It's a weird energy for sure- at the grocery store today, I wanted to buy all of my own things and she insisted on paying. In itself of course that's fine, but she seemed irritated by how high the bill was when we checked out. This is an old and reliable pattern in my family of a kind of constrained generosity that leads to peevishness, but that one cannot refuse. Very confusing mixed signals. 

After four days of these kinds of strange and shadowy and unpredictable interactions, I sank a lot this morning and simply collapsed in bed and slept for a couple hours, and woke up feeling awful. All of it in combination with the Fourth of July was horrifying, really. The holiday itself felt like a morbid joke, and Facebook was a reassuring source of humor but also a contributor to increased frustration and outrage. The country and everyone in it and especially my family all seem insane. I'm sure I seem insane to them as well.  

Fortunately up here at my sister's there is a lot of alone time, and the surroundings are incredible. I stay in the apartment they have built out over what was an old barn, separate from their house. The place is right on the edge of national forest, along a river, not far from the much larger Delaware River, with endless woods and solitude. There's a couple of spectacular hikes along a running river and some waterfalls, etc. The deck looks right out on the small river behind her house. They work all day so we really only interact in the morning and evening. They go to bed very early, so I always get some alone time at night as well. My brother in law runs hos own very successful HVAC business and he basically works 12 hour days, 7 days a week in the summer. We basically get along well, yet I always feel like an imposition when I am here. That may well be my own stuff. I have rarely felt comfortable as a guest. 

The last family effort on this year's trip will be a big reunion in New Jersey of my three nephews, two nieces, their various partners, their children, and my oldest brother. Two of the nephews and one niece are my oldest brother's kids, and the other niece is the brother in Allentown's daughter. My great niece and great nephew will be there also, which is always fun- I think they are both five years old. My oldest brother, age 64, had a stroke a couple years ago and lost his short term memory and is fairly severely disabled, and visiting with him can be challenging, but is definitely easier when there are many other people around. 

In general, I absolutely do not want to age the way the rest of my family has. I realize one can't always choose in these matters, as with my detached retina and prostate cancer, but to whatever degree it is up to me, I am committed to make choices that increase the odds of the way I want to be. The top aspects include mobile, flexible, mentally alert, resilient, adventurous, in as good health as possible, open to new things and not living out of fear. I have already made many changes in diet, mental health care, recovery and exercise and so on that make this more likely, but every time I visit here I get it even more powerfully. Watching the precipitous physical, emotional and mental deterioration of my siblings who are not much older than I am is very jarring. I understand the state of my 80 something parents, although I do not see it as necessary by any means and know some people in their 80's who are spry and active. But the alarming infirmities in siblings who range from two years to six years older than I is very difficult for me to witness.

After the family jam on Sunday in New Jersey, I visit with one of my most long term friends, Beau. I think we've been friends for 37 years. And we have so much in common, we might as well be brothers. I feel a greater kinship with him than I do with my own siblings, as a matter of fact. 

After that, I head west. Back toward "home," although I have no place to live. I still am not entirely sure what is going to happen. I am really looking forward to more open ended, alone travel time. I brought my car camping gear and I have plenty of DEET so dark wet woods, here I come. The darker and wetter the better. I am still not sure where. I don't have to plan as carefully there because there is no agenda. And I don't return the car until July 26, after which I immediately go to Tucson for the Botanical Society of America's annual meeting. 

Gathering compassion and detachment. Compassion that arises naturally from detachment. The equanimity meditation presents itself- "all beings are responsible for their own actions. Suffering, or happiness, is created by one's relationship to experience, not by experience itself. The freedom and happiness of others is dependent on their actions, not on my wishes for them." Time to meditate.