Drama

The Book of the Living:




I

Crystal encasement, the dual beauty and hazard of ice, sheathing, magnifying, distorting, transporting everything to another place and time, a mummification of the beautiful bark and bud of our time. A look, perhaps a second look, out the door, window, and the landscape floods into me like the rush of fresh air taken when I've forgotten to breath. When I am open, it floods in, emotional and more real, perhaps, than the other drama, the conversations, the news, the tits and tats of moving through a day's routine, of schedules, of unmissables. And so, there are two dramas, the one defined in part by television, by necessity, by blind ambition, and there is this other one, the one that I must have presence enough to be absent enough to feel.

Today, in a conversation, I spoke of the heirlooms that define us (we're family), and voiced the question, 'what of them?' Even if I had children, what is that object that my grandmother's mother touched every day, what is the bear I had as a child, what is the portrait, but a look into eyes long dead, seeing a face with one half of one half of one half of one half of my mother in it, and yet I recognize my mother in her great grandmother, I recognize myself in that bear, feel home when touching that object my great grandmother touched every day. And so I live now and then at once.

For a while, I was vehemently anti-establishment, which meant effectively, that I thought I knew things I did not end up knowing. I thought it was someone else's fault. That 'it' was a fault at all, was wrong. But I was right too, because I was discovering passion and meaning in my life. I discovered, though may not have realized it, that I didn't have to have anything but what I have to be me. My teen dreams were brochures for a scheme, and I distinctly recall thinking that I wanted, or wanted to do many things that I don't feel a glimmer for anymore. We change, yes - but we also recognize. 'Our truths' are not others' truths. We recognize that we're alone in the world, and home is as great an adventure as Kathmandu, and for me, it is home, instinct. It is what I have, it is the answer, all the answers, and inside of it, I can do, be, swim and swarm and drink and love.

As I peered out into the cold shimmering icy wet morning, I realized that with all that seems missing to me, I yet have everything. What is to discover, but what is right there in front of me? I can dream of, and pursue magic elsewhere, in the mountains and mysterious mythologies, or I can have them in my own back yard in this prescient reality that is my life. I can ask questions, or I can live with questions. I can pursue depth, or I can enjoy it. I can marvel about water, or I can immerse myself in it, and feel it. Today, I could have disposed of everything, but I realized the amount of time it would have taken would have surmounted the gesture, yes, only a gesture. For every action, there is an equal and opposing action. This is true and is truly debatable. If we consider an action to be movement, then there might physically appear to have to be a counter-action. But stillness is action, and I wonder if the opposing force is a force at all, if it is also stillness.

Music was once a significant part of my life. Music spoke for me, the lyrics' clever and wonderful ways to say important things, like I love you. Music was again someone else's ideas adopted, adapted, co-opted by me, my publicity agent, a skill. And I've found new meaning in music now, only that which makes me move a little, not often a lot, that which tells me something about another, that I don't want, but that I like. I have now found that the music I enjoy most is the music that pulses along side my heart, that expresses despite the lyric, emotion, motion. Clever words and mystery no longer speak for me, my eyes speak for me, my heart speaks for me, and the music that beats with me, is me.