An Open Letter to Those Whose Heart is in Question

As I sit and feel the air move around me with the rich smell of fertilizer wafting in from the open window, I am thinking about the wealth of organic life about me. I am disconnected from the life I had, but reconnecting with the feel of the earth I knew a long time ago.

I am happy here in so many ways. The guys I live with are like a little tribe unto themselves. They are local and do not dream of moving far away. They busy themselves with projects and complete a lot of them. When they lose interest or change direction, the old projects are dismantled and serve as parts for the new thing. It is a form of recycling that is the same as it always used to be in the city-states that populate the history of civilization.

I just got back from a trip to the big city. Burlington is a college town on the shores of Lake Champlain, and today as I walked along the mall that is Church Street, I was reminded of the place I used to live. But it was never the urban life that thrilled me. Rather it was the people that I adored that wanted to live there that held me in the city for so long.

Now far away from them, and far away from the upbeat tempo of urbanity, I have slowed down enough to think and feel. When I arrived, the trees were bare and the wind moved through the valleys with little resistance, but over time and at a rate that was never surprising or overwhelming, the merest buds have opened out into full, rich leaf, and every view is one of green and is a balm to the restless eye.

And I have it easy. If it was only me in this world, I would think this a paradise, as the men I live with do. I might never want to leave. But years ago I looked for and found a family way that I used to want to mold in the patterns I have in my mind from growing up. I had children and was married and was plugged into a dream that America wants of me.

And it was miserable. Not the kids or the endless wrestling match of conflicting schedules, but the underlying pressure I felt from trying to match what I understood to be the right course for a good American family with the artist and creator that wants me to flourish in unexpected ways. I wanted trust without knowing what the outcome would be, and there was no way to express this. I should say that I could not express it in understandable ways: there were plenty of ways it came out. My wife and I were of the same mind in this, but never on the same page.

A deep unhappiness pervaded our short marriage, and while we recognized its appearance with us, we could not find within ourselves the strength to confront it in any way that would offer any hope. We dreamed of different and important ways to be, but ultimately our restlessness meant shifting from place to place on the map. We were ever more inconsolable as each new place we moved to had the same pervading sense of the desperate unhappiness our inner conflicts created.

So we broke down like so many of us now do. In this world of beautiful television pictures and easy access to every new idea on the internet, it is easier than ever to be dissatisfied with what you have. We came together in the spirit of a small primitive tribe, but divided as the world kept presenting new features we didn't have.

But something in me could never let go of the family. I couldn't lose another child to distance and continuous mis-communication, so I hung around, always under the cloud of partly feeling trapped by circumstance. I became what I never wanted to be: a weekend dad. But it was what I had and I called it enough. I struggled along as best I could and presented a brave face for my new life to those to whom I had promised in the most sacred act I would always be there for.

I write poetry. I study poetry. I see poetry now wherever I look. I took in my unhappiness and translated it as best I could into beauty. I used to think that if I got to where I am now in an art, I would be content. Then I was heartbroken further to find that words are no redress for the loss of touch. I took a lover. I took another and still there was no connection that was as dear to me as the one I had lost. The word "betrayal" took up residence in my being and reminded me in every new tryst what I did not have, and although I could see beauty in the flesh rise before my eyes, I could not maintain any connection with it.

We are funny creatures. We lose ourselves so easily to the pressures of other people's ideals. We want matches to who we believe ourselves to be, but when we reach out and touch the space where we appeared just moments before, we are dismayed that there is a different reality at work. Our desperation increases as we give up the parts of ourselves that mean the most to who we have always been, for an idea of who we should be in the eyes of the world.

I had the strange fortune of finding myself, through persistent nearness to my chosen family, able to move in again with them, this time not as a lover, but as a roommate, with an easiness that was entirely unexpected and contrary to what those in my confidence though was good for me.

By this act, I established myself as above the advice of those not within my own skin. I remember saying to myself that this was a mistake I was going to make in the name of trust. Everything in me wanted to make an honest attempt at re-establishing the connections that meant the most to me, and no amount of "good advise" was going to change what I believed in.

I believe that two people can move together as individuals and find their ways unique to them while maintaining the intimate ties that make life mean something. I believe that there are promises made in this world that are as unmovable as the mountains. I believe there are reasons for the inscrutable that higher forms of meaning know and can only whisper to us when we are in unguarded moments. I believe that choosing love over everything else, no matter what course it takes us in, will never steer us wrong.

But this does not change anything else but what is inside of us. In the end, we only have our own soul, and while this sounds and can feel lonely, my heart beats with all those I have ever loved as fiercely as if I were with them. Circumstance has brought me here, to Vermont, alone, but the same forces that pressure us to be unsatisfied with our lives also contain the seeds of our renewal. I came here bare and lifeless. I felt defeated and resigned, but as the leaves unfurled, I slowly realized that I was breathing the very blood of my rebirth.

This is who I am. I came into this world alone. I struggled through the years of my education. I found love, lost it. I made decisions that did not stand the test of years. I found love again and lost it again. I built houses of wood and stone only to watch them fall in on themselves. Love found me yet again, and again, and again. Each time I made mistakes that cost me what I wanted so badly to possess. Each time the price seemed steeper than I could afford. And here I am alone again.

Here is the difference: all I have to do to feel my love as a force beyond my or anyone's control is lift my face up to the sun, and press my beating heart with my hand to my chest. You are always here. And I will always be here, too. This is who I am.

Tao

Just to start and let the mind go where the mind wants to go. Here I go again. Feeling this way. I know that what I read in the Tao mentioned specifically that the first indication that the mind isn't getting enough energy is emotional instability. When the mind does not get enough energy, the first indication is emotional instability. Interesting. I am feeling a little emotionally unstable and I have not had anything to eat today. Make the connection. Know what you have to do and set about taking care of yourself first. For the same reason we are instructed to put our air masks on before we assist others getting theirs on in the event of sudden cabin pressure loss on an airplane, I have to help myself out first before I can help others, for the idea in practice here is deeper than it usually seems. While I recognize in myself that I am probably explainably teetering on familiar and destructive patterns, I recognize, not only in myself but in Davin and others the same pattern in various strengths. "The brain can only burn glucose, which is also known as "blood sugar". In fact, the brain, which accounts for only 2% body weight, consumes 25% all available blood sugar. Unlike other tissues, the brain cannot switch over to fat or other fuels when glucose supplies in the blood run dry. Since blood can only carry enough glucose to last for about four hours, any interruption to the steady supply of glucose in the bloodstream results in immediate impairment of brain functions. The very first symptom of mental impairment due to glucose deficiency in the brain is loss of emotional control.The Tao of Health, Sex, & Longevity pp. 85-6 I was walking and it was spectacular out. You forget what it's like to live for weeks in rain and cloud. Then you forget what it's like to see the sun. Then the sun comes out and you go for a walk and it's warm and everything is amazingly dense and green and the flowers all put out their perfume and the birds flit out from near shrubbery as you walk by. The only sound is water flowing. You forget you work. Forget you have problems that have no solution. You walk on only to feel the passion of your legs tug the grasses beneath your feet. You are not as involved with what you are thinking because you have to pay attention to the ground you walk on. You can look at your problems as if they were not your own. You can feel what the next--the very next--thing you need to do is. You start to know that you belong here on this planet right now. Then you go back in and try to do your job. Endless problems. Only seem to make more, and solving any of them does nothing to help solve the problems you have outside of work. But it's better to have walked. It helps nothing directly--does not make money, does not solve issues, does not make phone calls you need to make--but it does do something that helps you know it's all going to work out. Look at that bank there, where the river has washed away huge chunks of land. New green grass is already set up houses there. There are animals that have new territory they didn't have before. Sure that great old tree is now going to die sooner than it was if the ground beneath it hadn't eroded, but it is not in a hurry to die because of it. In fact, that tree that's half tipped over appears to be flourishing. It can't last much longer, but it's not giving up. Far from it.

Winter, Colorado

This love is white
With mountain peaks rising
Into the distance of sky
As ordinary as a single bird
Held by the twisted branches
Of a little naked tree

Friends

One could say there had to be a face that this all leads to. Is this a nightmare that leads one down the gulley road to the foot hounds where the deals are made? Of course not silly, it's just the way it looks on tv. So there is an intuitive being and a numbskull in the mix who are always wondering what there is to say about you. They always wonder what about them you are thinking, They go sentences on about their special milieu but are scare to listen unless couched in their way. It is about learning each of their languages and translating it not only to myself, but to among them all as a society. But this is what I do. It is not what I want to become, it is what I already am. In fact, everything good is a stripping away. I say that, but I don't feel it is quite that easy. You do want to strip away the unnecessary in all the applications you can, be it information or organization or goal setting in personal, business, or the ubiquitous "other" category. You just work it. You show up and direct where there needs direction. I don't know why I am talking about this now. I want to say there is a point and that I merely cannot see it. Long fingernails are no asset. I am suddenly filled with revulsion for words and want no more part of it. "Merely an exercise," I mutter. So what's so funny about four guys sitting in a room smoking pot and talking when the telephone rings and it's one guys girl calling to say she left her keys in his car and the spare that she usually kept under her mat was mysteriously gone and her friend wasn't home who had the extra key, honey, when are you coming to get me? One guy starts in on how this is a relationship test; another points out the manipulation potential and the inaccuracies and absurdities of her position and therefore, while the last, his brother, is rocking back and forth on the floor with his head in his hands. What's so funny about that?