I am not happy with my country to put it mildly. I have been critical of it for my entire adult life. If I don't smile for the camera, which appears to be the case, if I tend to be serious a lot of time and not particularly fun to be around, it is because I am very worried about what the so called developed world is doing to the planet and to nature, on my watch. So, I would be remiss if I did not address some of my feelings about that in this writing, and unpack my own, admittedly skewed, analysis of what is causing such dysfunction in our corner of the human race. I think we all have a right to weigh in on that.
People wear (metaphorical) gloves for lots of reasons. I was wearing gloves because I didn't want to get my hands dirty by writing about things that are not neat and clean and well-defined but kind of wild and not easy to pigeonhole, with barbs and prickers and sticky sap and maybe even a little poisonous to touch. In my defense, my gloves were skin-thin gloves, but gloves nonetheless. To be fair to myself, some of the poetry I was writing (over the last few years) was trying to tell me that I wasn't being completely forthright or genuine, to myself or anyone else. I was holding back. I guess I thought that was OK. It turns out it isn't.
Lack of complete honesty can easily become a life-long habit that some of us have to pass through if we intend to keep pace with the stages of life. There is a time of life, after middle age and before old age sets in when, other factors allowing, life affords us the opportunity to down-size our psychic space and clean up our act. We can live this phase out by literally simplifying the space we are responsible for, but it's really an inner process because it centers around listening to our soul.
In order to deliver honesty I am going to write more in the style I have used in journaling, not worrying about writing for an audience. To an audience, but not for. I will make statements of fact that may only be true to me, because they are supported by my experience and my thought process. Even though I may sound earnest, I am not trying to win the reader over to my side or convince anyone that something is true against the proof of their own experience. It is important to me to be as accurate and factual as possible and not try to soften an idea or a conviction so someone can easily change its shape and say, "Oh, there, I guess that works for me."
Often in group conversations I choose to take a back seat and hold my tongue because my position on topics such as religion and death, spirituality, the meaning of life, the nature of Nature, and of human nature, the future, and other large open-ended topics, even politics, is based on a world view that doesn't have much in common with the world view of my culture, or even my community. Here, in this memoir, I am giving myself the floor to say what I think and feel and know and intuit about matters with which I enjoy a certain long-standing familiarity. These topics are my friends that have kept company with me throughout the years. As my friends, they have been maturing right along with me. I can finally say I have figured a few things out, knowing full well that someone down the street might be feeling just as confident but what they have figured out might be the antithesis of my truth. Everyone has their own experience, and it doesn't have to matter, to them or to anyone else, if I think they are wrong.
What kind of truth am I talking about? I want to think that it is akin to the truth that bubbles up when you visit an exhibit of "modern" art, that is, the art of the first half of the 20thcentury when artists were nothing less than the saviors, therapists and conscience of Western civilization during the darkest chapter of its history . . . darkest until now. My son and I were in New Haven, Connecticut for the wedding of my nephew and we decided to check out the Yale University Art Gallery. Together we wandered through giant rooms of Brancusi, Max Ernst, Juan Gris, Jean Metzinger, Edward Munch, Picasso, De Chirico, Dali etc. Whenever I expose myself to those worthies it feels like a baptism by fire and ice followed by a warm Spring rain. Exposure to truth is like that. It burns and scalds and sears and cauterizes, ultimately cleansing and ultimately empowering and refreshing the soul.
A word about the chronology of the story I am telling. It is not a linear story and if I told it that way, it would not be the real story but rather a narrative of convenience for easier consumption; it would be a fake story. If we are honest with ourselves we find that life is messy, and memory is fickle and, just for example, I can easily imagine writing two memoirs, one told by my head and one by my heart. The one told by my conscience would be different from both. This memoir, as it purports to be, is about finding myself in time and what, after-all, is time? Is it a stream? A spiral? A loop? Is it illusion? Is it the dimension of our mortality? I choose to see it as all that, but it is also subjective, especially when we are using it as a medium for tracking our lives. As I say, it wouldn't be fair to the reader if I stuck with a chronological time frame. (By fair I mean I wouldn't be delivering on what I am aiming for.) The image I have for what I am offering here, is the three-dimensional chessboard on Star Trek, the third dimension being time. There are still rules governing the movements of the pieces, (diagonal, rectilinear, step by step) but, all I am saying is, the possibilities, compared to the flat board, are as potent as they are self-evident.
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