Culmination – Cruise Report Part IV
Day 7, 8/1 – Inside Passage
Emerging from the murky shapes of a confused dream passage, I awaken to find I am a strong, proud knight standing in a forest alone, my armor gleaming, the world solid beneath my feet. I look up at the trees towering above me, yellow light streaming through the branches like the soft fingertips of God brushing the earth, and I feel so strong, so powerful, so invincible. It is a moment of absolute completion and joy. Suddenly, my legs tremble and begin to melt, and I feel my strength draining from my body. I look down to find a spear protruding out of my chest, having pierced me clean through from behind. I fall to my knees, filled with surprise and sorrow, the darkness swirling around me, inside me, collapsing all that I have ever known. In the fading light of my eyes, as the world drifts away, I hear a familiar whisper so close to my ear as to be inside me.
even the greatest warriors must fall…
*****
I wake up with a start, like having a bucket of ice water doused on me, my head crackling with electricity. I feel so loud, I can’t believe people in the room can’t hear me. I’m easily the first one up and out of bed. I head up to the mess hall and grab breakfast (all I eat for breakfast anymore are pineapple slices and muesli, despite claiming I’m going to try an omelet every day). I happen to see Tom’s parents so I sit down with them to chat, a conversation that soon deepens and widens as his mother opens up her world and her sorrow over her father’s death and her mother’s deterioration (his dad wasn’t particularly comfortable and kept changing the topic, but she would keep returning it to this place). I listened and felt within the spaces between her words, tasting her sorrow, more full and rich than metallic, and at the end, she gave me a really heartfelt hug and told me she liked me a lot and was very happy to have met me. She said she hoped to see me in the future, and wondered if I just didn’t like younger men. I laughed. Told her that Tom is an amazing person and will one day be a powerhouse who can do whatever he chooses with his life, but he’s at the beginning of his journey while I’m at a very specific place in mine. She gave me a big hug and we parted.
I’m walking around listening to my iPod set on random, when the song, Colors by Amos Lee comes on.
I find this song to be beautifully romantic with such delicate emotions. I’m thinking how I would love to see Justin Wade perform this song, and as the song is still playing in my ears and I’m thinking about him, he walks by. Synchronicity! I approach him and ask him if he knows this song, and he does but he doesn’t know how to play it. I say I figured he’d do an amazing cover, because his voice reminds me of Amos Lee.
Really?, he asks, skeptically. You think our styles are similar?
Hmm, I say. Not your styles, but something else. The way your voices have soul.
He smiles, asks me what my name is, and I introduce myself.
He says that with such a mixed crowd, he usually does songs that people know, but every once in a while, he’ll do more alternative music, like Decemberists or Death Cab for Cutie.
Which Death Cab song, I ask him.
I did I Will Follow You Into the Dark the other night, and two girls cried, he said.
I ask him if he’s ever been to the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, and I tell him how I saw Death Cab there a few weeks ago, and it was unbelievable. The Hollywood Bowl itself on a Sunday night is a spiritual, transcendental experience, but that night, as the band played Transatlanticism, they set off fireworks to the most powerful part of the song.
It was one of the most uplifting, soul-shaking musical experiences of my life.
I asked him if he knew any Damien Rice, and he said he knows Delicate. I ask him if he’ll play it tonight, but he says that he hasn’t practiced it in a while. So I tell him, then you’d better get to your room and start practicing! I mention that the album O is kind of like a drug to me, that I actually had to cut myself off from listening to it because when I get into it, I end up staring out of windows, listening to the album for hours on end.
When I walk away, I realize I’m craving it now so on comes Damien Rice and O, and off goes my mind staring out at the sea.
I go to the Cova, which I completely associate with creativity and discovery now, to write. For the first time in months, I feel I’m ready to delve back into my book, to review where I’d gotten to, and see where I will be going. But first, my morning pages.
8/1 Free-Write Excerpts:
I don’t know about perfect love, but I know about great love. And it’s okay, because sometime, somewhere, we’ve had it so that’s why we are thankful for it now. I am feeling everything bittersweetly. I remember something my college mentor, m, wrote that has always stayed with me:
writing a poem about the girl should never be better than the girl, than being with the girl. don’t write the poem about the girl unless you’d really rather be with the girl.
If you’re not really here, then I don’t want to be either. If vision is the only validation, then most of my life isn’t real (* Black & Gold, Sam Sparro)
I am looking for a man with a good sense of timing. I’ve learned how to fight for things. Now I’m learning how to fight for the right things at the right time. Learn to crawl before you walk. Learn to love before you commit.
Your daddy, he’s the iron man. Battleship wrecked on dry land. Your mama she’s a bitter bride, she’ll never be satisfied…you know, and that’s not right. But don’t cry, you know the tears will do no good so dry your eyes. They told you life is hard, misery from the start, it’s dull, it’s slow, it’s painful. But I tell you life is sweet, in spite of the misery, there’s so much more…be grateful. Well who do you believe? Who will you listen to, who will it be? Because it’s high time that you decide…in your own mind… (*Life is Sweet, Natalie Merchant)
The weight of the world is something that feeds you, an animated force that believes in you. That your own darkness becomes a source of strength. Inspired poetry in my heart and now I have a fever to burn off. I only move in one direction, forward. If it makes it hard, keep breaking it down until you have something you can manage, but you have to keep moving forward. In the struggle of bittersweetness, in the space between comes truth. You never completely know anyone. Platonic love might be the purest form of love–no demands, each accepts the other for what they are. But it is not just platonic love that lays sole (soul?) claim to this.
Jesus did not turn water into wine. He turned pain into bittersweetness and that’s the best we can do and still be truthful.
There’s still a little bit of your taste, in my mouth. There’s still a little bit of you laced, with my doubt. It’s still a little hard to say, what’s going on… (*Cannonball, Damien Rice)
Only the truly strong know how to be truly gentle. Perfect love is inspiration. Great love is tragic. But true love is unconditional acceptance. In a bittersweet world, learn to love every taste and texture because it’s what makes life rich. Accept that who you are today is the sum of your decisions. Believe in a beautiful tomorrow but know where you are today. And beyond all, trust that you’ll find beauty as deeply inside yourself as in the horizon of an outstretched universe. Then…then is a place that doesn’t exist yet. We is a figurative that today can be just as wide as tomorrow. I don’t forget. But I do let go. What was lost was once found. What’s found was once lost. Take solace. Nothing of value is ever lost forever.
*****
I suddenly realize it’s the first day of August. I realize it’s time to celebrate because I’ve made it, and as I hoped I would be at this junction, I am not only back to my true self, I am stronger than ever.
Here’s some back story.
I’ve been striving for August. Earlier this year, as I was burning the pain of the end of my heaviest but most heartbreaking relationship through my system, when every day was a crawl on the path of returning to myself, I was hit by a sudden inspiration, an intuition, a knowledge, that everything would be upright again by August. That if I could put myself back together and be my whole self again by August, I would already know a man there who would make all this pain worthwhile. I knew this with a conviction I could not explain. Who or what he was, I wasn’t sure, but he was someone I’ve been very, very excited about since March, someone I needed to work my ass off in order to be in the right place for. In fact, when I finally opened up to my ex’s brother about the pain from the relationship in June, I mentioned it:
Dear Ian,
Thank you for your sentiment. It actually meant a lot to me, hearing your perspective. I’ve been pretty private about things, but I have to admit that relationship with your brother was one of the most difficult and painful experiences of my life, particularly because of how high our hopes were for it, because I did truly care about him and wanted the best for him, and because I had always been someone who believes that with enough love and desire to make things work, you can ultimately make things work.
But I look back and can’t help seeing how naive I was, and that things can only work out if both people are honest with each other and are genuinely working towards the same goal. Your brother is not a bad person but he’s a man of many secrets, many hidden rooms and rooms hidden inside hidden rooms, so many that I think he doesn’t even know all of them or at least, can not keep track of them. So at the end, no matter how deeply I tried to see, feel and understand him, to this day I still have absolutely no idea who he is, or if the person he wanted me to believe he was even existed.
This…this is a very, very sad knowledge to have to hold in your hands about someone you loved.
I believe at the end of the day, he is his own man defined by his own needs, desires and agenda, and the only decision available to me was how much I was willing to give up. In the end, I just wasn’t willing to give up on myself. It would have been disaster. But time heals all wounds no matter how deep, and the benefit is that I’m more able to appreciate people who are open and honest and just overall, kind-hearted, gentle people. Not saying these particular people and I are necessarily romantically fated, but I can tell that I’m definitely clearer on what is good for me, someone I can form a true cooperative partnership with who makes me feel safe and loved and whom I can trust. Someone I can give these exact positive, warm feelings back to and he’ll appreciate them. I think I probably needed to go through what I did in order to grow up more and be more clear on what’s good for me. Isn’t it strange how we don’t always want what’s good for us? I really think this understanding is a major part of growing up.
Meanwhile, life is relaxed, family is doing GREAT, I’m meeting so many new people so randomly, men and women, old and young…lots of connections and interesting conversations. One thing I’ve been excited about is I have had a strong feeling that I will be meeting someone extraordinary around August, but have no idea who, so that has been a source of intrigue. I’m patient though–won’t ever settle again for anyone who isn’t kind, open-hearted and genuinely wants to be with me, so whoever it is who touches my heart I trust will be a cool dude.
There had also been a spike in men circling around me in June and July, some pretty aggressively. Many seemed really nice and very interesting, potentially suitable partners, but I’d suddenly become very clear in my concept of “Not My Dude.” They were like last chance impulse buys, things to test
me when I’d already come so far. Could I be tempted to give up in the final lap? I felt sure that whatever happened would be revealed around August, but a relationship that was established in June or July would not be it. It wasn’t August yet…wait for August. I would know by August. Do not commit before August. So I have been patient in waiting, patient to not settle or give anything away until I had reached and passed through August. I figure I would have a better idea by then. And now, here I was.
*****
So sitting in the Cova Cafe, I’m going through my notebooks and I noticed I would look up sometimes and catch a lot of people staring at me. Maybe it was my level of intensity when I’m working. Maybe it was my giant pile of papers and notebooks strewn over the table. Maybe it was because my t-shirt said, wtf?
I didn’t let it distract me though. I had to get through this while the door was open and while I had the desire. I found myself staring out the window a lot at the rolling gray waves, and wondering how one could come to know the ocean best. By understanding every tiny drop, or by drinking in the entire expanse of its meaning.
One of my favorite ideas that I try to live my life by is,
Do not lose the forest for the trees.
But do not lose the trees for the forest.
I feel it probably goes the same for the ocean. And the sky. And everything else under the umbrella of life. All that exists, and all the spaces in between. It’s the parts as well as the whole as well as their relationships with each other that make up true meaning.
Suddenly I look up and Christian is standing at my table. He says hello. I love how polite and courteous he is. I like men who are gentlemen. We chat, and he says he’ll be free for tea at 3:30, and I tell him I’ll probably still be here.
My family comes by a few times, invites me to do things, but I’m busy. Mostly staring out the window at the water and listening to Damien Rice, but busy.
Christian comes by later and we have tea. Another one of our deep, easy conversations. One of the most glaring things I notice is how easy it is to communicate with him. I’d recently written about how I feel so often I’m translating my thoughts and feelings to people, building off analogies instead of just communicating. How I didn’t want to translate anymore because it was so tedious. I want to find someone I can just talk with, someone whose mind and soul is on my level, and we would naturally understand each other.
I completely felt this with him, and it astounded me in my realization of how lacking this clarity and ease of connection has been in my life thus far. The connection was so natural in breadth and depth–his mind is quick, responsive, expansive, intelligent, generous. He had mentioned before that his girlfriend felt he didn’t talk enough. I was astounded by the wealth of his mind. I knew that I was seeing just a very small sample of the man, but he had so many ideas and perspectives and wisdom, they were like fireflies burning so bright they could be seen illuminating the daylight. I felt thankful that he was being so expressive, so open and communicative, and I felt lucky in how it seemed he was also able to understand my thoughts, feelings and perspective.
My God, I thought to myself. I may have finally found my equal.
I remember a point when he was telling me he felt that he had been very lucky about his career progression and how he’d found the various jobs on his path, and something sparked in my head; I was suddenly dying to ask him if he considered himself a man with a good sense of timing. But I held my tongue. My head was buzzing. Suddenly, I had a thought.
An inkling.
Too bizarre to be true but still…
When’s your birthday, I ask him.
September, he says, a bit hesitantly.
September what?, I ask, feeling the top of my ears go numb.
8th, he says.
Now I am dizzy with numbness in my head, but I maintain a poker face, make a comment about fall birthdays, how since my birthday was always during summer break, I was always jealous of people who had birthdays during the school year.
But really, my mind was flying back to that night in that bar, that conversation I had with the hipster.
That night, I had actually been disappointed because I thought it had been a false lead, so bitter about why the universe would lead me to something bright but empty. The problem wasn’t the emptiness of the encounter with the Missed Connections guy. He was a distraction. A red herring.
The problem was I didn’t recognize the most important clues that were dropped that night, details I had originally been too lazy to write down when I’d originally posted about the experience, but which now I truly believe I was just withholding from myself somewhere in my subconscious to prevent me from being overly influenced. What I’m about to reveal, I swear, I am not making up.
So flashback, early July, the world ramping up for the full moon that would also feature a lunar eclipse. It was supposed to be magical, mystical…something intangible but powerful in the air. I’ve never been so drawn to a full moon as this one. That week I had been particularly restless as electricity was sparking in my brain to the point of making me uncomfortable, and I felt hot on the trail of something. My mouth would water inexplicably with the passing scent of whatever was on the edge of my psychic periphery, but which I could never quite grasp or pull into focus.
So I walk into The Other Room, which has been very good to me in bringing me connections with strangers that have been illuminating. I’ve been coming here a lot because it’s safe, comfortable, a great place to watch the sunset, and I have been working on being patient–that if I sit in one place long enough, the universe will bring the connections I need.
I had recently been hanging out with my trainer, this young guy with a very green outlook on life. Definitely not my dude, but a friend to pass the time with. He had asked me one day if I was Batman, because he noticed I never seem to sleep, I’m always off helping people and making strange and powerful connections at night, I’m good at appearing and disappearing, I always talk about how I use my powers of darkness for good, and I guess, because I live in what friends call the Tower of London (top floor of a secured building) and drive a black car. So I laughed at this idea that I have a secret superhero identity, but it is true that I have a strong urge to help people and work against true darkness (evil, negativity). I do most of my connecting at night. And I am a bit mysterious and magical. So it got me thinking about Batman, and how he had Alfred, a mentor and right-hand man who took care of Batman so he could go out and fully be Batman. Plus, I liked the idea of someone who could iron my clothes, prepare my meals and keep me on schedule. More than anything, I wanted someone who could be there for me when I come home, torn up and bloody with fighting life’s battles, and this person would be there to bring me back to myself, the private me that the world doesn’t get to touch, and help me return to strength.
So I’m sitting at the bar, thinking about how I could find a real life Alfred, a person who allows me to do what I do best (didn’t have to be a roman
tic connection), when this guy next to me starts talking to me. His name is Louc, aka the hipster, a French-Canadian graphic artist. I kind of don’t welcome him talking to me because I think he’s hitting on me, but the ice finally breaks when I mention that I find that I have important experiences because I’m alone, and he tells me he understands. Because, if we were both here with other people, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But this conversation could only happen because we are both here, by ourselves, looking for some kind of experience that could help us find the next step in our paths.
Cool, I think. Maybe we can talk, so thus begins a 3 hour conversation.
I’ve already written a bit about what the night meant for him, but the thing I left out was that after I helped him feel understood and gave him hope of finding someone amazing he could spend the rest of his life with, he turned around and said he wanted to help me as well. He asked the bartender for something to write on and got a server’s notepad. He asked me what I was looking for and I told him about this idea I’d been thinking about…having an Alfred to take care of me. We went through it, and he told me that I probably could find a guy who would take care of me, my organization, my basic emotional needs, etc., but this man would suffer, because he would always want to be my partner, and he would probably secretly be deeply in love me, but I would never see him as a partner. He said what I want is a partner I consider an equal. That Alfred would never work for me because I would never allow someone to serve me but suffer.
It’s true. I would never want someone to stand by me, give me things of great value but suffer for what I can not give him in return. But Louc had kind of presented it as an either/or, and I wondered if it was possible to find someone dynamic I could consider as a partner and an equal, but who could also help me take care of the smaller but necessary details of life. The basic needs. The simple pleasures. What kind of person would this be? What kind of person……….
Then I got a spark. A symbol. Alfred, the eternal mentor/servant/caretaker/healer, was like the exact archetype embodied by the symbol, Virgo. Maybe I was looking for a very dynamic Virgo.
And then I remembered something else…prophecy.
Years ago, I was told by a very spiritual woman that she felt my eventual life partner would be an Earth sign. I was 21 years old and at the time, I found Earth signs to be very boring, or difficult to get along with because we had nothing in common. My Gemini world is one of constant change, ideas, adventure, connections. I couldn’t stand the idea of being tied down. I never saw myself settling down and getting married, let alone willingly getting trapped by the mundane. Earth signs, to me, were terrestrial people who sat on the ground like lumps, obsessing over meaningless details. I couldn’t possibly see what they and I could have in common.
But over the years, as I’ve gotten to know myself better, I realized that at heart, I am a serious and practical person. I do have my Mars in Virgo which means I feel most comfortable when things have been practically considered and plans are carried out with foresight and efficiency. I like making lists. I like things to be in order. I like being spontaneous, but not without direction. But still, I couldn’t imagine being compatible with an Earth Sign–I found the Capricorns I knew to be too cautious and out of touch with deeper emotions, Tauruses a lot of fun but close-minded, and Virgos…well…I didn’t think I’d met many Virgos. I was always intimidated by the idea of them because they’re known to be very detail-oriented to the point of being critical, and I hate being taken apart and criticized (my grandmother is a Virgo and can be a bit of a critical terrorist). I don’t want people to forget about my forest because they’re too busy criticizing my trees!
So I’ve walked through life, but that prophecy has always been in the background, firmly ignored of course. Yet even when I learned how to use the symbols within tarot cards to help me organize and understand the abstract impressions I get in my mindspace when I’m alone at night, I would always find that there was an Earth Man in the distance. Sometimes I would gauge whether I’m on or off my path by if this symbol was moving further or closer.
But to be honest, I take these things with a grain of salt. As much as my mind is open and able to grasp the abstract and mystical, and as much as I’ve experienced some highly unusual and unexplainable things in my life, I’m still very practical and prefer hard, tangible evidence before I fully trust something enough to believe in it. Or at least, I like having corroboration from another person who can swear they experienced the same thing.
So as we sat at the bar and we discussed this Alfred business, I wondered…maybe ultimately, I really am looking for a Virgo. Maybe that’s why I haven’t really crossed paths with any… perhaps because I’ve never been open to it. But now I’m in more of a place to appreciate their qualities.
We moved on to other topics when he asked me what I was looking for. He said he had a feeling that my being in an equal partnership with someone who is on my mental and spiritual level is very important. That when I find this person that I’m looking for as a partner, children would suddenly become very important to me as well. I told him that I wasn’t highly motivated by the idea of having children, because I only wanted to have them in the right situation with the right person. But if I never did, I could accept that because sometimes I feel that I’m out helping and guiding so many people, that if I never have children of my own, there will still be plenty of people in this world that I can give that nurturing energy to. But he said it would be different, because when I have my own children, I will be able to take all of my wisdom and shape them into extraordinary people, and because my partner will also be someone of extraordinary wisdom (because this is the only kind of person I would accept as an equal), our children would probably have the chance to be very special and influential to the world.
It made sense to me. It almost seemed too good to be anything but a wish or dream, but I liked the idea of it.
Somehow we got on number theory and I told him about how I see numbers (energetically dimensionally), and how they sometimes guide me in my decisions. How I’m a 9 (all the numbers of my birthday added together then collapsed: 6141978=36, 3+6=9), and how 9 is a number that I feel is the culmination of human experience and wisdom, that the outlook of someone who is a 9 will be always humanitarian…to get people to rise towards their most humane potential and strive for a higher level of awareness. Plus, if I’m anywhere around a craps table, 9 comes up a lot.
I told him how 9 is the only number where if you multiply any number with it, it turns back into 9 (ie 9×2=18, 1+8=9. 9 x52 = 468=4+6+8, 18=9). I also say that when you add any number to 9, it turns it back into that number (9+5= 14, 1+4=5). So I had a theory that 9 is both a mirror and a collective embodiment of the entire numerical spectrum of energy. That as soon as I realized the mathematical properties of this number, I realized how it correlated to my life and my abilities, how I have an ability to mirror people so they project their inner selves onto me to be able to understand themselves; I believe that’s why so many people feel that I’m “kindred.” They are seeing their own reflection in me.
It also correlates with how I seem to be able to take in other people’s energy and embody their traits, like by taking in their true selves, perspectives, feelings, ideas and experiences, I am able to more fully realize the spectrum of human perspective a
nd human experience, becoming more a collective being holding a greater understanding of the world. That the more people I meet, the more people who I have dynamic interactions with, it adds to me, so I find greater and deeper ways within myself to relate to others. because I’ve collected not just the sum of who I am, but I’ve also incorporated the knowledge that comes from the sum of others. I relate this with how 9 multiplied with anything turns back into 9. I travel the reaches of the universe through others, going so far just to return to myself, but now possessing a deeper knowledge than before I left this exact point.
He wants to know what he is. He gives me his birthday and I find that he’s an 11 (11 and 22 are the only two numbers that don’t collapse because they’re ideals). I say, wow, 11 is a good number; it’s the next number up from 9. 11 is a leader of men, someone who brings new ideas into this world. I tell him how I’ve been wondering lately, if I’m looking for an 11 to help lead me to my next step (just another one of those ideas that sprouted in my head sometime over the last few months for no discernible reason, and just seemed to linger persistently).
What do you think I’m doing right now, filling up this notepad for you?!?, he asked with a smirk. I laughed. True, I said. You’ve been beyond helpful to me with your insight tonight, and I appreciate it.
We continued our discussion, and I imagine that anyone listening in would have thought it quite unusual, but it seemed to make absolute sense to us in that moment. He thought September, 2009 would be an interesting month for me because of how important 9’s are to me, and told me to really think about how to manifest my money goals that month to lay down the groundwork for the next stage of my path. He said to look out for 9/9/2009 in particular, which would be a 29 day, always a magical day for me.
By the end of the night, we’d exhausted the notepad.
It was a beautiful connection, a beautiful night. A few minutes later, in walked Missed Connections guy and this entire conversation took a backseat in my mind, but before Louc bade me farewell that night, one of the last things he said to me was, “Keep a look out for 11’s!”
*****
And now, back on the cruise ship, here I was talking to a dynamic Virgo. And here we are on a boat called the Mercury, which is the ruling planet of only two signs–Gemini and Virgo. And what first caught my attention about him, but of course…the number 11 he was wearing on his back.
hahaha.
My t-shirt said it all.
WTF?
My brain has to file it away. My mind feels just a push away from being blown, and I do NOT want to start suddenly babbling like a lunatic about numbers and astrology and French-Canadians and fate. Not to a guy with a girlfriend whom I technically just met. So I bite my tongue and continue having a pleasant, civilized conversation like the sane, totally normal person I know I’m capable of being.
Christian mentions that there will be a magician performing tonight, and that the act will feature a segment about time. He thinks I might really enjoy it because of the way we talk about time, and wants to know what I think. We actually spend a bit of time talking about the show, and I’m definitely enthusiastic about it. When we part, he mentions again that I should really catch the part about time that the magician does, and to tell him what I think about it.
I go up to the Sky Deck, taking pictures. We’re going through the Inner Passage, and the water and the surrounding mountains are beautiful. Catch a couple of Orcas leaping out of the water. Stunning.
*****
The show. The first act is this acrobatic couple performing a piece that’s like Cirque du S’oleil. While the performance is pretty amazing, I’m more amazed by the song they’d chosen:
Ludovico Einaudi’s Primavera.
I can’t believe it. This day is killing me.
Now, maybe it takes another writer to understand this, but I will try to explain anyway.
My creative inspiration requires energy. Mood. Anima. A lot of times when I’m writing, if I find music that is inspirational, I will loop it in the background and it becomes ingrained in the soul of the work, inspiring it, feeding it. I remember the day Brian introduced me to Einaudi’s album Divenire and suddenly, it was all I could listen to, and suddenly, I was writing again.
I remember hours upon hours upon hours of writing with this album coming through my earphones, so much a part of my inner mindspace and thoughts, that it almost seemed to reside inside me.
Now, to hear this piece of music I’d associated with being inside me played in the world outside, this music that had inspired me as I wrote a book about strangers and chance encounters and magic being shared with a room full of people, just…blew me away.
It was like being turned inside out, and I felt the entire room magnetize as the line between what was inside me and outside of me suddenly become fuzzy.
The magician was next. He was a young guy with great energy. Had an entertaining and funny act, nothing mindblowing but definitely enjoyable. At the end of his set, he gets serious and says he wants to talk about time.
My heart speeds up. I need to pay attention. He takes out a piece of paper in the form of a circle, like a clock face, with 4 lines drawn at the 3, 6, 9, 12 marks.
He talks about the nature of time. How if we enjoyed the show, then the time went by quickly. But if we didn’t enjoy the show, time went by slowly. How we can waste time, give away time, have spare time, etc.
Meanwhile, as he says these things, he’s ripping off pieces of the clock face.
He tells the story of his aunt who always supported his doing magic, but she died of breast cancer before she could see his first performance.
He says that on any gravestone, you’ll find two numbers–the date you came into this world, the date you leave. But what’s even more important than the numbers, is this.
He rips off a piece of the clock and holds it up. It’s one of the black lines, held horizontally.
This dash that separates the numbers, he says, this is your life. This dash represents how you lived your life. He remembers something his mother said, about how it’s not the money we make that’s important in life, but how we invest our time. That life is short, and we don’t have much time, so we have to make the most of it.
Then he takes out a fan from his pocket and fans under his hand. The folded piece of paper that had previously been held there whirlwinds into a snowstorm of confetti, glimmering off the stage lights. It was powerful and poignant. It was the truth.
At the end of the show, the house lights came on and people started exiting. I saw Christian at the top of the stairs, and I figured I could have gone up and told him what I thought about the “time” piece, but for some reason, I felt an urgency to go pack my bag to prepare for disembarking the next morning, so I ran out the other entrance and went back to the room to pack.
*****
Last dinner. We were late because my mom and I were out on the deck taking pictures with the sunset. O’Neil, my favorite drinks server, comes by and
offers to take a picture for us. I also get a picture with him.
Dinner’s good, and there’s a little parting ceremony as they introduce the restaurant staff, and the servers come out with Baked Alaska’s. We’re nearing the end of the trip, and in a few days, I will return to LA and the rest of my family will remain in the bay area. This is the closing of the short but amazing time I’ve gotten to spend with my cousins, so I bring it down to a serious moment for Edison and Jonathan, telling them, “I want you to know that I’m always gonna be there for you. So whenever you get depressed or mad, you just remember your cousin Julia, and how when we get together again we’re going to–” (and taking from Notorious B.I.G.’s “Party and Bullshit”) I tell them we’re gonna “Party…and eat cake. And party. And eat cake.” They start laughing so hard and the rest of the night features them rapping about partying and eating cake. I wanted to leave them with a happy memory of me.
My camera battery inexplicably goes from 2/3rds full to flashing red, so I decide to run up to the room to charge it for a few minutes. Before I go, Edison, who had been playing a game on his dad’s iPhone, suddenly says, “Julia, you can have this.”
I look up and he’s thrusting a piece of paper across the table at me. I’m not thinking much, so I take it and open it up.
What’s this, I ask.
And then I see.
It’s the DASH from the magician’s clock.
My hands and mind go numb.
Where did you get this, I ask him.
The man gave it to us, he said.
Where did you get this, I ask again.
The man gave it to us, he said again.
I asked him again with the same answer, like I thought maybe I wasn’t hearing him correctly, that I wasn’t holding what I thought I was holding in my hand. That suddenly, I was amidst an elaborate hallucination.
Why are you giving it to me, I ask.
He shrugs. I don’t want it anymore, he said.
I’m thinking about the trail of coincidence that led to this piece of paper being in my hand. It started with Christian mentioning that I had to catch the show, noting in particular that the piece about “time” would be most interesting to me. We had spent some time in conversation about it, and it was the last thing he said to me when we parted, to make sure to catch the “time” piece and to let him know what I thought. I remember thinking that the most interesting thing about the piece was of course, the dash, how poetic and poignant of a symbol it was to denote the expanse of life between the point a person enters the world, and the point a person leaves. I remember that’s what I would have told him, if I hadn’t been hit with a sudden urge to avoid him and run out of the theater to go pack my bag.
Then I think about how, in a room of hundreds, how Edison had ended up with this piece of paper. I remember I had seen them come into the show late, and I had saved them seats but I waved and couldn’t get their attention. If they had seen me, they wouldn’t have been in the position to pick this up.
Then I think about how it had ended up in my hands. You give any trivial object to a child, it can go anywhere–in their pockets, left someplace random, in the garbage, to one of their parents who puts it away carelessly or throws it away. Yet he had held on to it, all through dinner, and rather than putting it down or giving it to someone closer (his mom, my mom, his brother), he reaches across the table and gives it to me. In fact, I would later ask his father about this piece of paper, and he would tell me it was given to him as “spare time” by the magician, that they had made several efforts after the show to get him to throw it away but he wouldn’t, clinging to it like it was a part of him he wasn’t ready to let go of yet.
I’m blown away. Either I am suffering from a brain tumor, or this day is building up real evidence of magic.
I know that Christian and I have been talking a lot about the direction of his life, his next step, etc., and I figure, since he was the one who pushed me to pay attention to this piece on time, this must be a gift from the universe to him to let him know that the universe was watching and had him in its hands.
So I put it in my pocket, and I’m going up to the room to charge my camera, when as I’m running out the door, I see…Christian. Whom I’ve never seen in the restaurant, but he was pretty much the exact person I wanted to talk to. But he was talking with someone, so I just breezed by and said that I had something for him, and ran out.
He was still there when I came back. I asked him if he was going up to the dance club later for the farewell party, and he said he would stop by.
I skipped dessert and headed out to watch Justin Wade who was playing in the Cova, because I hoped he would play Delicate.
I listened for a while, and he was good, but I had promised to meet up with my family at the dance club before 11 and dance with my cousins (they kick out anyone under 18 after 11pm). I went up but they weren’t there. In fact, there was no one on the dance floor. I went back downstairs, and found that Tom and the girls had shown up and were at one of the tables. I stopped to talk to them. I wondered how Tom was doing with Sarah, but I couldn’t tell.
Just before 11 I headed back up to the dance club again, and this time, my mom and aunt were there. I tried to dance with them a bit but the music was really bad, so I told them I was going to go downstairs. I preferred the acoustic music anyway, to be honest.
As I’m heading downstairs, I’m wondering if I should call Christian to tell him that I would be in the Cova instead. I thought about it, and I knew that we hadn’t exactly made plans to meet up, and plus, I felt weird calling because he’s technically at work. So I get off the elevator and I’m debating, and I figure, wouldn’t it be easier if I just ran into him. And around the corner…there he is, walking towards me. Unbelievable.
I was just coming to look for you, he said.
I’m laughing and tell him I was just thinking about running into him when it happened. It seems the perfect circumstance, the perfect timing, the perfect culmination of a storm of evidence to ask him…
“Christian, what do you think about fate?”
What do I think about fate, he replies. Well, I think there are many things in life that are coincidences that don’t mean anything, but then I think there are some things that happen, that are just too unusual to just be coincidence. That there has to be something else. Like you and I being here at this moment and connecting the way we did. So to answer your question…I do believe in fate.
Man, I’m so happy. That was exactly what I was hoping he would say. That was exactly how I felt, that in this moment, in this place, there was no one else I should be sharing this magic with but him.
Big grin on my face, so excited I can barely talk, I ask him what he thought about the piece in the show about time.
He said that he thought it was very true and poetic. That life is short, so you have to take risks, you have to go for the things you want. And that his favorite part about it was how he used that dash to represent our lives.
The dash, huh? It’s funny that you say that because…
I pull out the piece of paper with that one, simple slash of black.
His face lights up and he laughs that otherworldly laugh of his that fills my well with happiness and stirs poetry in my heart. And looking into his eyes, through our laughter, I am suddenly so conscious, so aware, so connected to him in the right here and now, that for maybe the first time in my life, I am completely conscious of having found a treasure that must be absolutely real because there is someone else who believes
in it as well.
I have finally found someone who can see the rainbow.
Where did you get this!, he asks.
My cousin gave it to me!
Then I tell him the story.
We end up sitting down in the Cova, but not before I tried haggling with Justin to play Delicate. He still says he hasn’t played it in a while and is convinced he’s gonna butcher it, but I felt like considering what was happening today, between my insides and the outside world, that if he would just attempt it, good things would happen. I could feel it. My happiness was spilling out into the world, and magic was happening.
We sat down and talked; I was still so happy and giddy that I blamed it on the wine. But really, it was life. This moment. This proof of something…more…woven within the fabric of reality. The fact that Christian was here. The fact that I have never, ever met anyone like him, anyone I truly felt was my equal. The fact that upon meeting him, the rainbow appeared, and he could see it.
He mentioned that he’d been busy taking pictures with guests and noticed I’d never taken a picture with him. I told him that the day we’d first really talked, he’d mentioned so many people were taking pictures of him and he didn’t know where these pictures go, that maybe he didn’t feel comfortable having his picture taken, so I wanted to respect that. He laughed and said he wasn’t an Aborigine. He told me that in a few days I was going to wake up and wonder if meeting him had been a dream, and I wouldn’t know because I didn’t have any pictures.
I laugh, because this is the same thing I’m always saying to people I randomly connect with. You’ll probably wake up tomorrow and wonder if meeting me was just a dream…
He had mentioned he had his own ways of remembering me. It made me wonder how we would remember each other. How much of it we would believe.
We talked long into the night again, but somewhere along the way, there were moments where we seemed to lose the path. All that truth that had previously come so easily, now became a struggle, tentative, as the corners of the room began filling with doubt.
Who is this man? What is this? Is any of this real, or has this all been some kind of joke, a trick of my mind where I’m reading reality from a completely insane, fantastical, skewed point of view? What if I’m hallucinating and not even here?
I’m suddenly terrified that I’ve made this entire connection up in my head. Above me, I hear cracks in the dome encompassing my world, fissures upon fissures running rivers and branches along the surface of all that I know and believe, threatening to crumble over me, taking with it, everything I thought to be true. Oh, this better not be another joke on me.
But if I actually am sane and still rooted to reality, if this moment, and all the things that have led up to it are indeed real, if this connection is real, then what the hell were we supposed to do with it? We’ve each built very real lives in our own worlds. Real responsibilities. Do we even really know each other, outside of this special, magical connection, this connection that the universe seemed to be having so much fun with?
How can such a beautiful thing survive in an imagination-less world that would never allow it? Because all of it is true, isn’t it? The simultaneous existence of magic, and the equally stunning reality of life.
We could feel it. We were good for each other, we brought out happiness and serenity within each other, such a level of mutual positive regard and acceptance. Such understanding, strength, comfort and beauty. Such a simple, easy connection that unlocked big, powerful things, things we’ve dreamed of but were uncertain in an uncompromising existence…and yet…what is potential but something that may or may not exist but in a place far away from the world in which you presently live? Somewhere, we each had built our own worlds. Here, we have co-created a dream. A beautiful dream witnessed simultaneously by two extraordinary people with their eyes wide open, but still, a dream. Because the world is still rooted by reality. And what fools try to bring the fantastical treasures of one world into the cold, stark reality of another?
It felt impossible.
As I listened into the spaces in between, I asked not, what is this, but, what now.
And in the middle of everything, one word emerged, a voice deep inside whispering, faintly at first, then louder. One word.
Undeniable in its presence.
Singular in its resonance.
Surfacing against the stark white napkin laying on the table next to those long, beautiful fingers of the man, just one word in thick, black, oily script:
Drop.
Merde.
I’m being ordered to let go.
He asked for my blog address, and I gave it to him, after writing a little farewell message. Until our paths cross again when we least expect it…
The room was heavy with the hearts of giants.
He said, you would be a nice person to sit on a sofa and watch a movie with.
She thought, you would be a nice person to slow dance by candlelight with.
Oh, the things we want but can not say.
The unspoken is tragedy. We have such potential for happiness together, but we live in a world that would never allow it.
Is it fate that crosses two people from completely different worlds on a path? Is it fate that also leads us away? Or does fate bring us together, and life tear us apart? Where does free will play into the equation, the drive of the human heart, the boundless soul, when it recognizes something of great value, something it once lost long ago in a distance memory, and reaches with all its might to hang on?
Fate, you tricky little fucker. I want to throttle you.
I ponder that if we lived in the same city, we would probably be the kind of people who meet and become instant best friends. He says that he would have to be gay to be friends with me.
Do you think men and women can’t be friends?, I ask.
They can, he says carefully…but if we lived in the same city and met, I would probably fall for you, and that would be very complicated given my situation, he says.
Like he hasn’t already fallen, I think. I’m pretty sure we both hit our heads on the way down.
It got late again, and it was getting close to having to say goodbye. I remember the espresso machine kept making intermittent loud noises, like that sound Jim Carrey makes in Dumb and Dumber when he asks people if they want to hear the most annoying sound in the world. That rude fucking bastard. He just wouldn’t let us talk.
Finally, it was time. My heart was breaking, but my mind must not know. It must soldier on, maintain the surface, present a ship that’s not sinking slowly back into the murk. Be strong for him. Be strong for me. It must make the leap into something more abstract and noble, because on a cosmic level, on a spiritual level…holy hell! On a fucking moral level, this was the right thing to do. We were playing with something powerful here, and the universe wanted to know what we would do with it, when there was really only one thing we could do, being the kind of people we are.
I was suddenly hit with an epiphany. It’s all in the contradictions. That the greatest, most powerful things in life, in the universe, in existence, are the mos
t simple, the most pure, the most honest, straightforward truths. The beauty of naked connections. That love is so big, so massive, that it transcends all of time and space, the entire giant realm of possibility and infinity, just to be here, in the right now, in this very moment and place, this tiny seed connecting two flawed and fallible human beings trying to make their way through a complicated life like all the other billions… but regardless of whether it makes sense, it is here. And this is all that matters.
As with the knight in my dream, the realization fell me to my knees.
I would give it all up, I realized. All this lofty seeking, the search for God and meaning, the need to find the ends of the universe. I would give it all up, give up all of this, just for the simple pleasure of being with someone kind and decent with whom I could live a simple, happy life.
And that was the truth.
I asked him if I would see him the next day, and he said he didn’t know, because we would be disembarking early in the morning. We hug, and it is a deep, soulful hug, and in that moment, in the space between all that is here and all that has brought us to this exact place in each other’s arms, I caught a glimpse of it:
Ouroboros.
The snake eating its own tail.
hello goodbye
in one breath
to the one person I have ever met in my life who made me feel complete.
through time and space
past present future
my equal.
He had asked me where he stood in my life, of the many characters I have met in my adventures, and I told him, he was in my Top 5.
This has been the only time I have ever lied to him.
He had been so serious and intent on building a wall of boundaries that I didn’t want to scare him, didn’t want to tell him what I knew in the deepest parts of me to be true.
He was the most important character of my story up to this point.
But I walked away from the hug, walked away from the man, because there’s a place and a time to find what’s yours, but for whatever reason, this wasn’t it. The timing wasn’t right. And we are people of good timing.
It was painful, letting go, taking so much strength and restraint to break that hug, respect the walls when I wanted to fall into it, feel the beating heart of this incredible stranger who had given me proof of life, proof of magic, proof that there can be someone out there who is my equal and can see the incredible beauty and synchronicities of the universe beyond the mundane. Who can make me feel so understood, so comfortable, so me, giving me the same kind of understanding and peace that I have found I can give others.
Somewhere, a sword was easily pulled from the stone, and what I was left with was an utter belief in the simple truth of happiness.
Bittersweet.
As the greatest love affairs are.
*****
The next morning was brutal. I woke up early again on 2 hours of sleep, nothing feeling real anymore, not even the feel of my body or my own reflection in the mirror. We had to go to the theater to wait for our group to be called to disembark, so I got there early. My iPod wouldn’t turn on. I don’t know why, it was fully charged. I was sitting there with my head in my hands when I hear a loud, happy voice.
“Judia!!!”
I look up and it’s my cousin Jonathan, that little ray of devilish sunshine bounding down the walkway, the pinwheel I got him for his birthday in hand. He’s wearing an over-sized blue t-shirt sporting a ferociously growling wolf that contradicts the soft pureness of the boy’s heart–so unconditional and wide open. I smile and open my arms, and he immediately crawls into my lap as though it had always belonged to him. I kiss the top of his head, inhaling the scent of youth and innocence.
“We’re going home today!,” he says.
“Yes we are,” I say.
“Judia,” he says, happily, as he rests his head against my chest.
“Do you love me, Jonathan?” I whisper. I realize as I ask this, I’ve never asked him this before. He raises his head, ponders his answer, then breaks out in that trademark smile that will some day break hearts with the sheer truth of its radiance.
“I love you very much,” he says as he gives me a big wet kiss on the cheek, filling my eyes with tears. This love. This is a love I can count on.
*****
They call our group and we all line up to disembark. Jonathan wants to ride on my back so I hunch down and he climbs on. As we near the opening to the gangway, I’m surprised to see Christian near the front of the line. My chest simultaneously fills with joy and heaviness.
As we approach, I ask him if he’s here to say goodbye and he says he is. I reach out my hand and we shake, but he gives me a hug as well. He walks us down the gangway, all the way to customs, and this long goodbye is perhaps the most profound show of mutual restraint that no one will ever know. We hug again and part, saying goodbye. I turn and watch him walk away, through clenched teeth. My heart unravels from its cradle in my chest. Slides to the ground. Shatters.
My family has watched the whole farewell, though they pretend they haven’t. All week, they have been aware of something going on, but I’ve offered very little about it, and they haven’t had the guts to pry. I’ve been quite surprised and proud of their respect for my privacy. We’re riding back to my uncle’s condo in Vancouver, the place where this journey began so long ago, so far away in time that it seems a part of another life. I’m looking out the window, mind blank, staring in silence.
Suddenly, my uncle chuckles.
“You’ll see each other again,” he says. I look up. He looks like a laughing Buddha sometimes, with his round, smooth face and his whimsical smiles.
“How do you know?” I ask him.
“Seriously?” he asks.
“How could you not?”
I don’t say anything, but I’m laughing inside.
Life. What can you do?
My iPod has decided it wants to be functional again. I put on the song that most fits the moment, fold my arms over my chest and watch the scenes of the city fly by at the speed of a new morning’s light as I slowly disappear.