The head is a place you must learn to make your friend.
From the beginning of this blog, I had two original ideas: one, give my personal history to my friend who I haven’t seen or heard from after two decades, and second, for the writing to energize his efforts to heal himself.
Now in my friend’s case, tackling a wildebeest would be more fun than his headaches---don’t know the cause, can’t cut the medication---it’s a defining distraction, let’s say. So whatever problems you face, be thankful if you’re head is a physically comfortable place. But don’t feel sorry for T.J. If you’re an expert on chronic pain, I’ll gladly put you in contact with him!
My friend Tammy Brewster is cleaning her house today in Georgia, wondering how she managed to find things this way this fine spring day. For this writing, I go to a room in my head I’ve been meaning to straighten for some time, kind of picking up this and that so you can get in but mostly just peeking in and smiling and saying, “that’s something I’m going to get to on such-and-such a day,” meaning you’ve just made peace with the fact that you are simply not going to get to it now, however much you sincerely may care!
You can work with yourself and your surroundings to create the state of your mind. It’s one reason silence is such an excellent starting point for finding a useful thought. As soon as you are able to stop your thinking and glide for two seconds, you are living!
"no wasted time"
So I’ve set out to be the peace I seek in others, the laughter I seek in others, the wonder I seek in others. I got a crash course in the nature of such things when I married a girl I’d met six weeks before.
The insight that’s come to me is that I should always remember the day we drove across Kansas, because we had not planned to be there four days before, just as we were then completing a trip to Colorado that I had not planned to take with her, since we had previously never met.
There is a feeling running through the beginning of things, a greatly inspired sense of assimilating one’s purpose, summoning one’s strength, and joy, set into whatever relief the situation provides. The joy can simply be turning away from panic or fear, or the joy can be an apotheosis of emotional treasures, for joy is what it is not---but more.
When you like the companionship in your life, you choose it as a goal unto itself. I tend to relate to people as an individual, dealing with existence in the ways an individual does, but the cultivation of my individuality shares in the product of one person, sharing the sacrifices of her life and time while I devote all my life to awakening the work I dreamed I would make, with moment-to-moment bits of clarity assuring me that I have found a way to be myself.
Everything that pours out of my connection to the love that makes creations finds some way into the light of my closest human companionship. Already my privately cultivated world, which I’d so recently learned to successfully treat as my own faithful companion, poured forth in its excited, primal bits, as the novelty of sharing every communication possible spurred me to talk through much of that four days’ ride. We chose to go it without one hotel stay, making our car our home, our love our substance, our journey, our purpose. Somehow we could discover in the elements of some new place a life set to support our dreams, our discussions, the pursuit of a better life.
You begin to know a better life as you find it, and without a doubt, there are healthy activities we’ve learned to pursue that promote well being, with many more we’d like to try; we have the feeling now about our bodies that we were beginning to have about our lives that day, when we stopped in Cloudland, Kansas, music and miles our only companions just days after a hastily-called wedding at her family’s house, the same family from whom she’d never spent a full day. They are people we think of fondly even now, as events would eventually tie me to the pleasure of better knowing them.
There are roads we cannot find when we fear we are lost, and calls that super cede many things that contribute to what is called the pursuit of happiness. Yet there are transitory possessions, and there is the one chance to begin seizing the enduring and critical opportunity to find some place in the siblings of humanity that you make. Fortunately, that chance drifts by the side of the living every second of the day, and its existence is the pillar of my optimism.
That day on the road, started when a state trooper rapped on our window to make sure we hadn't frozen, represents innocence. Later that day I was moved to buy a comic book during a fill-up. I gave it to her to read, and she did so, aloud, to pass the hours of that day that varied between cloud and sun. The Fantastic Four were all normal people in this story, living lives orchestrated to consist of the simple pleasures of pursuing non-super-heroic lives. Well before the Matrix, this story from 1981 or so featured the discoveries of their present existence within tiny androids alive in a constructed setting, set in motion by the man who hates them and links with them throughout their serialized (and fictional ) careers, Victor Von Doom. He's an angry, vain fellow who dresses like an armored stand-in for Death, jealously trying to destroy someone who'd pointed out a mistake to him, which pride would not countenance, leading to his own personal disgrace. But the things you think about, the choices that make your life real or happy, those are the creative inspiration you take away as the fantasy resolves over the course of carefully drawn pictures that lead into purely imaginary abilities and obstacles.
The difficulty of the choice to deny a false yet benevolent seeming reality resonates in the character's reactions, leaving us questioning what sort of denial will we accept if, on the surface of things, some side of ourselves is truly satsified. The surprising exercise of inventing one's own sound, motion and sense of time from the pages, which represent the creative nexus of drawing and writing, stimulated my new bride happily, and she began to glimpse the hidden power of contemporary comics in motivating my academic success and undoubtably the nature of my listening ability, which tended to explode with resonant images carrying emotional content associated with the symbols of each person's words. She did, incidentally, put it some other way, but her observations continue to challenge and delight, as well as aid, her blushing spouse.
This seemed to keep away her nausea; it had not been but since I met her that she’d regained interest in her food. This was final part of a decision to, without outward drama, give up on the wonderful woman she could create and give to the world. I could see she was deeply sincere, truthful to a fault, concerned for people and the consequences of her own actions, and carried an understanding of the wide-eyed dream of the life we all might know, but for the misunderstanding of its possibilities amongst the wide cast of humanity’s participants.
I have never had sorrow more than over what I discovered wasted. But such is one tree down the long path of life. Still, somehow my friendship with this girl evoked everything so warm and generous and humorous about her, provided her with happiness she’d grown afraid for which to hope, if I may phrase it so awkwardly. Truth without guile, beauty without style: if only I could tell you how glad it made me to get her interested in eating, something I could make her do by example of my own faithful appetite, an appetite for a simple life and a common touch while not truly understanding overly much about status or fame. However, an innate sense of guitar playing as the bridge to extemporaneous theater had led me to quixotic illusions that I might assemble from my confused psyche songs and a life of making music for people in concert and do all that position, done successfully, could give me opportunity to do, in terms of promoting, thoughtfully, the causes of the week. The weak.
I have auditioned for many roles to continue my survival, all predicated on honest, no-hassle dedication to freeing an inner muse, while occasionally fearing the outer man would age beyond the successful recognition of those dreams. No one’s dreams should ever be used against them, but sometimes you are simply afraid of death because you cannot deal with wasting your life. Yet you think of how others live with their own dreams, and only in time does it become simple again that life in the broader sense traffics in conflict, since some dreams violate the notions of others, or even the viability of bringing anything from those dreams to light. That is very personal business within everyone.
I’d hoped to pursue the muse, literally return to the mountains I’d climbed the summer before, become a very healthy person with a bright and generous life. Now there was someone there when I showered, there in some park in Tennessee while I’m using the bathroom, even---another person, a female, just as I’d always wanted, beside me in every meal, usually based on some meal we bought just for the purpose of splitting together. All these things I now share with you, I gave them to her, first on the promise that we would decide, in the course of every single day, if we belonged in this relationship, based on the idea that every love requires freedom, though that is hardly the only element one thinks about. I did not want to live a life I dreaded fulfilling, I did not want to live a life with my choice erased. What I found in time, is that once you are accepted for all that you are, in the vision of knowing all that you consider right and motivating and all you would become, you are likely to reconsider every day and conclude without doubt that if you are so happy to see a person smile, if you are so moved by their sharing nature, if you are so enamored of the way they enjoy things and understanding of what causes them distress, you will likely find that you do not need to waste time on reviewing the
quality of your choice, but will probably relish its wisdom.
When you mess with your lover’s hair, when you rub their sore spots, when you get some little thing from the fridge or help them find something or tell them more about something you know they find personally interesting---when you think about who they love and what they’ve learned, when you consider what they’ve done for you, when you wonder what activity might be a terrific fit for the two of you, you are having something that preserves memory, increases the values of one’s personal experience, something that brings peace to the willing and composure to new pictures in life. It is no wonder that much grief is born of its absence.
When she called her parents that spring day to tell them she was half a country away, that her first honeymoon plan didn’t make sense but with enough of everything we owned packed busily into our car, she would not be needing her old job, her old room, nor any worry for her concern, but she had decided we should try my original plan, to leave the hometown and search for a fresh start. The fact they trusted and loved her meant the choice of the help was only a phone call away, but she took this leap without more than a phone number to an apartment manager---actually, purposed to house mostly elderly residents, by my dear friend David’s mother, my host the summer before one week. I’d had a taste of adventure out there, and I found a satisfying way of mixing with total strangers.
Sometimes you long to get away and sometime you yearn to fall in love. Imagine the feeling of one day finding yourself in the process of both. That’s something you can check for perspective whenever you’re working along the flow of Who is going to become What!
“It Can Be Like That”
