Sunday, August 31, 2008

"Whoever is alone will stay alone, will sit, read, write long letters through the evening, and wander the boulevards, up and down, restlessly while the dry leaves are blowing." --Rilke
Specifically, I remember a weekend in Columbus, OH. The Hardcore Boys had moved along, and I had new roommates in a beautiful new home. It worked out that everyone was gone for the weekend, and my mind, the endless meaning-making machine that it is, took this as A Sign...I spent two days in a hammock, awash in loneliness and poverty, sobbing. Come Monday I was sought out and loved by the amazing people that 10 years on I still consider my main people. That weekend, though...I remember. It is helpful to remember that set adrift-ness. This is not who I am, but how I was raised, and my memory of this is why I am known as the Clinician That Can Deal with These Fucking Borderlines. I know what it is like to feel no center, and try to create one--I was raised in that world, and visit infrequently. It's probably bad luck to bet on such things, but I wager that I will never feel that alone again.
The counter of that is quiet, and reflection. I am a product of my age, and quiet is not easy--I call to Catholic saints, I ask Thomas Merton to help me out, but when someone text messages, I answer. Until this last week when my leg exploded in shards of numbing pain. I ignored my back pain weeks before, and this was nerve damage revisiting. Meaning-making monkey brain has decided that this forced paralysis is to remind me of quiet. I keep saying that I want less drunkenness. When I watch the kids corner a threesome, there is a clear internal voice that tells little Midwestern me to get a cab. Friends are mad, text messages fly, but in the end: I was not cut out for this. I am wholesome to the nth degree, by no choice of mine.
The job is another factor: you cannot imagine. I may not be bright enough to synthesize a child jail. Right now I have thoughts and encounters but there is no production--I have nothing to offer in the way of insight. I think I'm in a fallow phase, and so is this adorable little blog. St. Renegade is on a manhunt and a meaninghunt, saying goodbye to the Glee Club and to the Party Crew, and finally finishing "Rising Up and Rising Down." I beg forgiveness--to blog readers, to Chicago friends, to the whole world that asks anything of me. I'm in, like, pre-hibernation. What comes after, who knows.
Until then, I write about songs here: http://yourfavoritetune.com/songs/

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