Cheery Pit BBQ's and Coma-like Sleep

I had a beautiful little Friday. I slept a bit, visited with a few people and let the lack of sleep put me in a subdued state. Yesterday was a continuation of this happy, zen state. I slept, I sat, I ignored the chimes of my various technological devices demanding my presence here or there.

After an afternoon to myself, I decided to re-enter society. Kaitlin wanted me to come over and grill and Jo and Nelson were still at the market. I called them to see if they wanted to come along. It was one of those perfect afternoons that come together effortlessly. They were happy to pick-up the supplies and take me downtown, Kaitlin was happy to host and be descended upon; I was just plain happy.

Riding down the FDR, watching the city fly by on my right, the east river on my left and my best friend in front of me bantering happily with Nelson, I felt as though I was seeing a mirage. I was almost afraid to move for fear it would all melt away. Everything was as it should be, or as I have always dreamed it to be.

Everyone was happy, everyone was here with me. I was peaceful, basking in this vision. Dinner on the Terrace kept me floating in this state. We cooked and laughed and soaked-up the perfect summer evening. Thinking about it, I had to fight the moisture in my eyes. It was all to easy, too good. Life has not given me much of that. Possibility is what I live on, but actually having it is terrifying to hope for.

God how we laughed! We ended-up playing an infantile game, spitting cherry pits over her balcony. Jo and I returned home and kept each other in stitches dancing to Journey and Asian renditions of American pop. I have not laughed like that in ages. That silly, pure laughter. I laugh, but it is always tinged with irony, always with an underlying tragedy to it.

I let go over the last few days, riding a wave of irrational passion and possibility. Rather than slamming me into the beach, it set me down gently. I am calm now, the sky's just opened and as I hang out of my little window watching the torrents, a smile spreads across my face. Even the rain is beautiful right now.

I have not had any great epiphany, I haven't reach some new level of understanding, but somehow floating along I found comfort. What was I running from? Where am I running to? I haven't a clue, but I suppose we work out a lot of things we don't understand when we are sleeping. Perhaps I simply had to run myself ragged until I could sleepwalk myself home.

Absconder

I have been lost lately, running as though my life depended on it. There has been no quiet, no calm. I have been unsettled. The unrest within me, the nervous energy, made it impossible to be still, impossible to be quiet. If there is no calm within, how can you possibly sit idle, feeling the torrents surging through your chest?

It was an odd feeling, hearing people comment on how well I seemed to be doing. I felt only an inexplicable urge to push forward, to surround myself with people and chatter. Up was down, my focus and priorities skewed. The guilt about that nipping at my heels as I ran faster and harder. The thing is, eventually you will be caught.

I hit a wall yesterday. My brief periods of sleep were rot with nightmares and anxiety, and the numbness was replaced with sadness. I couldn't see and I crashed.

I let the melancholy wash over me through the day and finally sought solace in a kitchen, with an idealist. I put on my cosmetic armor and went up to Ma Peche to watch Emily cook and wait for her to wrap-up for the night. For some reason, sitting in a restaurant, watching the precise, uncompromising work of a chef, I was able to be still and quiet. I sat for two hours, watching her plate, watching her break down. I was still and silent. The sadness would nip at me and then scurry away. She finished her shift and took me to a quiet bar around the corner.

There I told her about my unrest. I told her about my guilt. In the midst of my mad dash, I was walling myself off from those important to me. Speaking in anecdotes to acquaintances and leaving no time to truly talk to family (both blood relations and dear friends). I was not writing, I was not thinking, I was starving my soul with the iceberg lettuce of activity instead of true sustenance. The disconnection brought guilt and the guilt pushed me on.

Realizing the futility of the life I was living, seeing how far off-course I was floored me when it caught me. On the surface it looked like the life I aspire to: active, social, exciting; but without substance it is vapid.

Like a crazed hunting dog chasing a rabbit into a briar patch, I found myself pursuing the wrong things. I was out of balance and out of energy.

Emily sees me as the woman I want to be. She loves me, but cannot be hurt by my distress. She is not afraid to confront me, but will never judge me. She still holds strong to ideals that age has softened for me. She is like a younger version of myself and it was with her I found my refuge. I was able to stop running.

There was not a monster hot on my trail; it was simply the helpless powerlessness that comes from loving people. I feel it when I look at my brother struggling, when I read about my terminal and broken patients, when I watch Jo fight for the life she deserves, and perhaps, if I am honest, when I realize that as long as my life includes people I care for, my own happiness is at stake. I cannot save them and I can only save myself to a point. I can work hard and attain much of what I want in life, but when it comes to people, what you want doesn’t matter. No amount of work or ambition will enable you to change them.

I was seeking without knowing what I was looking for. I was accepting facade over authenticity. And I was scared.

I think having Joanna here with me shifted my thinking back to a place where I no longer centered around my own core, instead I started trying to center around a pair. I can craft my life, but when you try to start building for two, your foundation will be a shaky one.

How could I not be anxious? I accepted the idea of sharing my life again, but with no guarantee of her participation. You cannot expect the actions of others to match your own. That is a recipe for disappointment and heartache. All you can do is live your life the best way for you with an open invitation for those you love to participate or not.

I don't want a taco truck of a life, constantly chasing the crowds. I want a brick and mortar abode. It will always be open for those I love to come and find laughter, consistency and refuge. Most importantly, no matter who is coming or going, I will always be home. A true home is not a place that resides in a crowd, or family, or a friend or a lover, but inside of me. Trying to find it anywhere else makes me an anxious vagrant, running frantically from one crowded room to another. I somehow forgot that over the last few weeks.

Sitting quietly in my apartment, not a sound or a soul around, I have settled back into myself. I can let go. I do not need to save anyone, that is not my job. I need only to continue building a strong foundation for myself. As MFK Fisher said, "Like most humans, I am hungry...our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it...” It is only after I satiate this hunger in myself I am able to indulge in “one of the pleasantest of all emotions… to know that I, I with my brain and my hands, have nourished my beloved few, that I have concocted a stew or a story, a rarity or a plain dish, to sustain them truly against the hungers of the world."

As long as I am wholly me, those I love know where they can find comfort. My life is a beautiful bungalow not a prison. It is exactly what I want it to be and will always be open. It was shuttered these last few weeks, but I am here now. I am smiling and free and ready to welcome and savor each guest who crosses my threshold or to relish it in complete solitude.

Feed my Eyes, Feed my Soul

New York is my home. Walking down 1st Avenue feels much like walking down the corridor of a large home, padding over to my sister's room in my fuzzy slippers. This place is requires of me only my truest self; it lives within me as much as I in it. Last night we were musing over beers in a dark East Village tavern about our home. Though it is home, that does not mean there is not room in my heart for other cities, other adventures. There is no where else in this country I would move, and I say this as someone who has seen nearly all of it. The world, on the other hand, holds far too many beautiful mysteries to be left unexplored. This lead me back to the exotic places that still linger in the landscape of my mind.

I have seen the beauty of Paris, walking along the Seine. I have seen the wonders of the Rockie Mountains on a crisp spring morning. I have watched the sun dip into the Pacific Ocean, setting the Santa Monica hills ablaze. I have swam in the azure waters of the Caribbean. I have found myself mesmerized by the grandeur of my beloved New York. Beauty feeds a deep place inside of me; I feast on it and succumb to it. When I think of beauty though, the kind that takes your breath away, there is one place that eclipses all others: my desert.

The unexpected bursts of beauty amidst desolation can bring a tear to my eye to this day. I can feel it inside of me: the unceasing desert wind, the purple and red of the sunset, the green jewels of life around the Tigress river that shock your senses as you come atop a sandy hill, even the sea of nothingness that surrounded me as we moved through southern Iraq. The orange and white trucks bustling down the road, the people dressed in flowing robes, the bazaars selling bootleg Micheal Jackson Cd's, all of it both terrifying and enticing in its complete otherness. My heart beats faster at the memory, filling me with both anxiety and longing. Funny though, looking at pictures of that place, it never looks the way I remember. I wonder now if the beauty we are drawn to is somehow reflective of something inside ourselves.

Iraq is a land of contradictions, juxtapositions: beautiful and barren, dangerous and peaceful, fight and flight. I sometimes think my own beauty comes from the same kind of contradiction. I am not the most physically stunning specimen, but there is something about me, like an oasis in a desert that makes me shine in a way that is not as simple as a beautiful face or body. What that thing is, I don't know.

I know that a desert wind blows through me, making me volatile and passionate and ever changing. Out of the currents of past pain grows a spectacular garden of serenity. The deserts of things yet unattained drive me forward. The constant dangers of the world makes me brave and grateful. The desert winds in my soul whisper to me. They tell me to live, live passionately, cherish people, push on despite the seemingly endless expanse of emptiness that sometimes surrounds me. I live in that rugged, beautiful, scary, exciting place, not as a soldier, not as a tourist, but as wild creature.

The wildness of that place speaks to the wild thing inside of me. That is why her beauty reigns supreme, that is why I must never stop seeking life in far away lands. There are pieces of me waiting to be discovered in faraway lands. I found my home in New York, but home is not the end of the journey. Home is the place that gives you the strength and confidence to venture back out, knowing that there will always be a place to which you can fully return.