We can accept: it’s alright to find ourselves growing in ways we can’t yet describe. However much we value sharing human experience, there’s a feeling that is both so incredibly alone, yet profoundly connected to the universe.
What’s independence, after all, without free people? Then, who else, do we decide is, to a similar enough extent to aspire and relate, similar in his or her potential to be a free person?
My purposeful desire to connect with elements and conditions that may have yet to acquire a vocabulary ---or perhaps play part in one developed elsewhere, in the occult or science---suggests a desire for communication. What is that, but to share another side, besides our own apparent mind? We reach into degrees of otherness to inquire about a full identity.
Now, I have found myself attempting to let another, and then another, person into my deepest trust, the foundation of my circumscribed identity. The conditions in which one such love formed made a nice rumination for a novel last month. To exploit a resource that so richly belongs to us both is wise, since we can also replenish and renew and re-experience its flow. There is the more cursory level at which I enjoy sharing culture and talk with many others, which is exactly my online (in my case, Facebook) experience. It’s given me a wealth of attractions. Yet to have this mental material on hand could well be an effort to distract myself from the internal growth process.
I realized, my secret efforts to re-fill the position of that deep trust with yet another person meet with the realities of patience and continued forgiveness to myself for allowing someone else so formatively deep into my emotions, into my shared peace with the Marc Kane, when that person was meant to abandon any sincere commitment. The demand to understand someone who I could not see face-to-face, who contained a focus for so much emotional investment and procreatively inspiration to make arts most of all, with the desire to please and emotionally fulfill her. The time has come again for that person not to be an outsider lost to me, apparently by complications, but to fulfill the inner self.
Even the novel was a purposeful attempt, not only to vie for a living as a writer in as uncompromising manner as possible, but to re-join society, the brotherhood and sisterhood of being alive, with an emotionally-resolved story of myself, and my sincere efforts to share. I learned, by describing details of physical movement and experience, I have my best opportunity to open that and share it.
In the process of learning to make a voice to share with others, I have turned to my best honest assessment of what’s going on, just as you each do with your own close friend or conscience.
As I listen to the Marc Kane strumming her way through “Aeroplane O’er the Sea,” after the emotionally soothing recitals of “Your Song,” I realize how very much I enjoy her presence. It seems so natural to lavish affection upon her. Her eyes are shut, the song’s flowing through her. Her attempt to digitally color a panel from the very comic book I mentioned (as presented on my t-shirt) to another person I found warm and friendly in person ties me through that inside out outside in ethos. I lie there thinking of the friends who have entered my thoughts, and some visions of the Lone Ranger, too. My epiphany of taking a few seconds to actively envision comfort to myself, the inner being reflecting the sadness over Kaja, who we did so very much wish to share all company with. I had long since made it okay to open that peace possibly for another; for fun it’s reflected sometimes in simpler ways, sharing the aesthetic pleasures of those we see, sharing perceptions.
Now, she plays again “Prokleta Nedjelja” and I realize how her performance of the song itself in the moment brings a smile; the moment where I remembered wanting to play this and so many other songs for Kaja right here in this room echoes, but does not weigh me down. Rather, it becomes a triangulation for that ever-lasting (if in the limited space of a body’s life, or not) effort to “sound out”-- to reach into the darkness of the senses-- and know something new, purposeful, personally revolutionary. There’s a lot of strange vocabulary for the paths there to ponder, and I sometimes wonder if I am reluctant to adopt the words of another because of how it might re-shape what I perceive.
I reflect on the "mountain of sacrifices" scenes in D'n'A/ Puzzle Girl comics, and also at hidden beginning and climax of "I'd Go Anywhere With You." I think the betrayal of our own safety and comfort with my own decisions when our triad was abandoned (and revealed to be one in disguise, it seems) generated my own personal "mountain" experience, shattering the comforts of what I had come to know and accept as my daily life. While I was reporting a fictional, symbolic exorcism of the psyche from one actual afternoon early in our relationship, crossed with our ritual to separate us from voluntarily vampiric influences, in writing that scene for the sake of the story, I included, as two inspired characters, two people who actually helped me deal with the harsh reality of our situation. Consciously finishing a story in dramatic fashion, in resolving Gina's problem she shares with Lewis---the one that had stunted her growth as a person---I magically resolved my own haunting, of the life we envisioned over the course of a year, one never, it was already decided, to be. Gina's emotional ownership of her spiritual, psychological security became my own, vicariously. Making love and comforting the lost ghost echoes a place one other shared in our imaginations. Laying her to rest with love, free of negative influences, became laying that dream to rest, yesterday's fruit carried away as today's seeds for tomorrow's new life. They are turned back from their dreams by the unexplained, yet in the process of being themselves, the characters find another doorway to their dreams in the final chapter. These victories of love encourage me to see the value of that work.
I’ve considered almost non-stop, alongside the agreeable shared and stable experience alongside the Marc Kane as we live in peace, creativity, and just enough agitation to move us into more beneficial personal actions) whatever I may have learned and still may realize from trying so hard to hold onto and understand someone whose behavior seemed to mimic our own, then seemed to belong to someone very different. I think of Egypt tonight, how this effort to live in consensus and its inherent conflicts based on difference (and indifference) happens in so many ways throughout the world, even with military agitation and great financial manipulations at its extreme in the material aspect.
Whoever else we would share inner peace with must have their own sincere declarations of independence. There is the point of radiance, in which we can share energies with the person yet remain somewhat detached from the vacillations and rely on whatever power exists beyond our own personal command to play its part in the fact that we care, but we cannot change the condition of this other person, willfully. The desire to seek that sort of control pronounces a demand for their dependence, for our symbiosis, to ask for a lack of independence.
When my own artistic independence has returned its voice to the songs we wrote, I feel secure I have a friend who will help synergize a production process in which we are capable of letting decisions flow through us, without struggling for control, to run together rather than lean. We have to find the effective way in which we can let another lean on us or the mutual effort is lost, to lack of will and balance. I’ve been preparing myself with practicing popular songs, which have the benefit of that shared experience when I spotlight them in public. It opens me as a vessel to exploring the new music and arrangement and production ability that will enhance the material, because I will be united comfortably enough with my instruments to bear with whatever discomforts emerge in these labors. Maybe if I will not perceive my work in relationship to that of others, I will arrive at something new and innovative, despite the limitations I may have assessed in myself. This bears true, too, in not judging myself in relationship to others in any other way. Take what ideas fit profitably into your sanity, but never drive yourself crazy with how bad anything is. It’s just another form of self-amusement---yes, even our self-inflicted tortures over our lost dreams and opportunities.
There is someone different than me, that is still my future result of directions taken now, and I have been aware I’m interested in investing that kind of love, attention, and determination in that self, as it was for Kaja. She is a whole other human being, and so to place her well-being as such a high priority and dole out all the respect and care I could manage seemed selfless. The ability to be selfless for others, however, must be nourished, as we must be aware of what we have to give without resentment, without need to control anyone but ourselves. Herein lies the limitations of cooperation, which will determine the success of such energetic gifts to find purpose.
Nothing less than the sensation of the value of living and creating the moments of our experience (all living reflects what is, to the person, the art of living) is at stake. If someone else becomes so valuable, we do, perhaps must, risk the robbery of value gone with their loss. Part of our identity has wandered away, rejecting us. One's integral self, the You you must wake up with each and every day and night, requires our fidelity. However the maxims of Polonious may have been to the old man in Hamlet,when suited to a context of just what truth is, it remains: "To thine own self, be true." Whether we grok the meaning in fullness, our words carry intimations of many-sided and fascinating experiences. It is sometimes the case that the words evoke a feeling but not any sincere commitment or attachment that one would defend as integral, and there is a level at which some action is necessary to accord a value, by which we may return to exploring the many sides of the intimate experience. We only have, in the end, what we appreciate. 
Having re-united with the origin story of my love for the Marc Kane---and however fictional the presentation, at its core I found myself first falling in love with her again, which will be welcome in any other books, and just may be the aspect that will unify TRANZ as its characters come to life for us---I have subsumed myself in the nourishing power of that togetherness. I will be engaged with some very social activities meant to bolster our economic fortunes, which rely merely on subsistence to keep us involved with a life we enjoy here. I will have to answer the call to the inner life, too, the one beneath the attractions I use to unite me with others emotionally.
We probably on some level enjoy all our peaceful interactions with people, even if we apparently disagree, so long as it doesn’t involve that personal eviction from one’s trust that is so taxing when cleaning the wheelhouse of the mind. I think I was at the spot where I wanted to depend a bit on some outside friend to nurture my emotional corridors that propose like leaves on a plant to reach out into the light and take in the radiance, while providing some satisfaction to the observer based on their own appreciation. I was at the spot where I had ways to serve another, which seems very purposeful as well, at times, but it’s really time to delve a bit deeper into reality, and cross a threshold that may be full of understandings ahead of their time. That is actually optimal. To write something with the power to intrigue a century later is to approach the apex of the writing experience. We may very much wish to share stories popular in their time, as entertainingly told as possible. We may wish to say, without pretension, something delicate and subtle to consider about the truths of human experience. We may at most wish to provide those at the loneliest outposts of achieved self-mastery and love with companion thoughts. It’s a peculiar kind of compassion, to shine this light and reveal this pathless area. A lot of esoteric minds have converged upon rare and controversial knowledge that may occasion to provide ritual and vocabulary, which is to bring the strangeness of the imagination, what some relate to the numinous, into the fellowship of literacy.
It’s possible, to let something important in our development fracture, is to expose ourselves to an angry repressed self. It’s like the power inside you turning out to be the Incredible Hulk, a force of nature you can only hope retains your core decency while it threatens to smash its foes and leave you penniless somewhere with a hole in your memory. It’s possible that much subtler rages and judgments may emerge in the process of being friends, and the impatience we feel with someone we want to like, in some way, love, may be our impatience with ourselves, for what we would be happier to be, yet will not work towards being..because our self-absorption has come to wear the guise of others, who bear weaknesses and strengths that are, emotionally, cognitively, really our own.
Now drawing is another way of being alone, yet communing. Much of the emotional bond I made with Kaja, both of us, was through the drawings we made of her, the hours where we were present with the thought of her. It is not always seen by someone who looks at a picture, even one drawn of themselves, but the creation represents private space and time given over to assembling a vision of a subject. It’s time spent with others: those who will see the work, and those evoked by the work. It makes a delightful gift, as it contains a non-verbal, get-to-it-whenever you like set of messages and considerations that emerge from the viewer. When your gift goes to a person who appreciates it, there’s something so restorative in knowing that energy and impression has become part of the further adventures of the human spirit, starring You, Too. (The Adventures of the Human Spirit, starring You, Too : I really like that meme. It has a lot of positive facets and even endures sarcasm with humility.)
The return of appreciation --which seemed to all drain away with the value of life as the Ba-Doom family changed by indifference that one of us would never reconcile---coincides with simply sharing that gift with many others, as was always intended. Such solitary attention was never demanded, but in light of what we were trying to develop from much too far away, physically and morally, it was a gift meant to sustain her until she came to our side. To love art that way is another way of giving to one person after the other. The value of everyone else who was not one of us three has re-emerged vibrantly, along with the willingness to make art, and the will to make and give it.
When you make a picture, you celebrate a person. A piece of jewelry, hand-crafted, may celebrate ideas even further open to interpretation. It’s that openness to interpretation that ultimately creates activities for freedom. To make art in any format is potentially to make activities for free people. What’s independence, after all, without free people?
I will have to not be afraid to be alone, take encouragement from unique moments. I need not to return yet with anything, though it’s like to open up a much more self-sufficient mode of approaching people. It’s really not so bad being to yourself sometimes. I think meditating in the presence of someone else might be really great, too; I imagine for those who occasion to pray together, or engage in other rituals, it’s a very similar togetherness of whole and separate beings. I know I offered to start one new friendship on that basis, and if it’s meant to begin in person at all, I think sitting in quietude together would be a great start.
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