January 31, 2014
I took a long mysterious trip down memory lane today. Friends held my hand and it was inspiring how 1974 came back to life so clearly in specific ways. That year I was married to Lyn, Jessica was born, friends from the Air Force were still visiting Lyn and I in Kenai and our soul mates Susan and Raymond were so close to us we didn't know if we lived in separate houses or if we had two houses we lived together in as a family. Today as the memories of that time rushed to surface like a fish after a mayfly, and the friends and kin of that time: Lyn, Jessica, Steve Leyden, Jim Hallock, the Carrs, Sharon, Mike, others at the Air Force, new friends at the hydroponics research facility in Kenai, etc., I felt as if I was there again. A picture sent to me by Steve placed me back inside the body and age I was then and it was like I could not get out of that body to put on my older man, my widowed man, my orphaned man suit back on and into the present day-moment. I was texting and FacePaging and emailing and singing out to the survivors of that time who would respond and the feelings I had for them 40 years ago were alive and well within me as if they were root memories sending tendrils all over my body and stimulating my brain and tingling my heart. You know the term, surreal; yes, it was surreal. I renewed myself with Steve and Susan and Jessica today as we chattered via the Internet and it was as if we were all sitting in a room and living the "back then" as it was happening. I saw myself in Steve's picture as a 26 year old, Steve was 19. Susan was probably "jailbait" that year, or at least she looked it, but her and Raymond were all but walking up the hill to their marriage vows about then of shortly afterward. Lyn was 23 and lovely of course. And she was the center of the universe again today, as she often is when I mentally deal with letting her be dead. Ha!! Fat chance. As long as my head works in the fashion it did today she lives it seems.
What changed as the day wore on and I tried to imagine myself sleeping tonight? Not much. I was essentially locked into the then that was chatted about. That time was the foundation of who we became and it affected and charged our courage when we walked away from those first intimate friends outside of the college dorm or the hometown or the family reunion. We were on our own then. Lyn and I were making our family and Jess was proof of it and Steve celebrated that by visiting from Elmemdoff Air Force Base. Susan wrote again today of the deep influence Lyn had on her life and how she continues to reinforce her acceptance of Lyn's philosophy that you take what you get and call it good enough. And you love the one who loves you and rides shotgun at your hip. I kept seeing Jim Hallock with us too and complaining to Steve that he had abandoned the "tribe". He has misplaced us and his unknown whereabouts to us was upsetting me. Well, at least until I admitted that I'd have to be upset with Lyn then too (and I know I am some days when I need her) for her whereabouts are unknown to us now too. Did I mention it was a surreal day? Yeah, guess I did, huh?
I was reminded a while ago, before I started writing this post of something Steinbeck wrote in his "Travels with Charlie" (Copyright; 1961, 1962). I am rereading that book in anticipation of my summer on the highway with Tess. Steinbeck was lonesome on his travels with Charlie and at one point admitted that the only way to deal with "aloneness" was to be alone. I know that and nodded when I read it. It felt good to have someone as honored by me as Steinbeck is as a writer to write something of his guts that matched my guts. Humanity, you know. Universality. We all have to concur aloneness at some point by facing it; by being alone, until we're ready to be with others and accept aloneness when it arrives again and again. And each time it does show up we get stronger in living with; when we just go off and be alone with it's hull, it's empty hull. It's non-ness.
Something else Steinbeck talked to me about in "Travels..." that hit home even harder and I feel is more pertinent to this conversation I'm having with myself and anyone who chooses to read along after I post this blog-note. He said that, "Only through imitation do we develop toward originality." When I think of my grand kids I have to concur with him. When I think about us young and restless one's in Anchorage and Kenai back in 1974, I agree with him again. I believe the power we young adults felt in our friendship then, growing as it was between us, within us, around us we imitated some of the special and new the traits of our new found "adult" (away from home) friends. We did some "absorbing" of those personalities into ourselves. We somehow knew after we separated how to become "original" and live our separate lives encourage and strengthened by the acts of imitation these dear pals we had been living closely with, no intimately in a genuine way in order to ward off the "aloneness" we felt being really away from home and on our own for the first time of our new age lives.
I want to quote something else from Steinbeck here before I end this epiphany if it's fair to call this post such an awakening. Steinbeck is referring in "Travels...", (page 100 of my version) to a note he made, "Relationship Time to Aloneness" to himself. He writes on, "And I remember about that. Having a companion fixes you in time and that (my emphasis) the present, but when the quality of aloneness settles down, past, present and future all flow together. A memory, a present event and a forecast all equally present." He writes this as if he's aiming it right at me, his future reader 50+ years later. I have to work to interpret this for myself and you might read it differently. For me, he is reminding his readers of a discovery on his traveling alone. He misses his wife. And when he is with his wife-companion he senses time, life actually, as in present tense. NOW. Normally we all strive for this in our daily lives and state it often I think, "Hey, live in the present", or something like that, right? That is possible when you're with someone, alongside your mate, in the company of another compatible companion.
But, then Steinbeck strikes a note for me, that again I have to agree with him on fully. "As aloneness settles" he writes and I have been in the state of settling aloneness for almost a year now without my mate who is not anywhere to be found. And what happened to me today in communing with my old friends from Anchorage and Kenai is confirming. My entire day was a condensation of the past, the present and the future. I could not separate out these "times" into separate tics of the clock. They all became one. And it is a state I have felt myself in for some time now. Not knowing if I'm here in the now, living in the past or planning like hell for a future that feels better than so many days in this state of settling aloneness. This past year I've acted out being 100 years old and that future was an experience in reality. Just as this writing now at age 65 on this computer is real, yet still part of my forecast of being 100. And I've painfully relived a life at age 26 with my Kenai pals. Which today was a dose of joy and sorrow. Joy in their memory, while sorrow was somewhat overwhelming in not being able to relive that wonderful time. And yet, I've also, for some time now, lived many current days in some kind of a fantasy with a friend of about 25 who I cannot imagine is 40 years younger than me by the calendar we call "real" time. It's really not all that fascinating from the standpoint of my emotional health. I might very much like to act on the opportunities being her age might present. And I will tell you, dear reader, this has been a struggle for me. A twist of fate that has injured me some days and caused me to write to her as if I am living her age. Realizing all the while that a romantic relationship is completely wacko (she coined the phase "batshit crazy" which I love and know I am in real time and real life). And during this phase of my grieving for Lyn, my living a life in the past, present and future I have been bounced around like a beach ball in bad surf not being sure which person I am; the 26 year old, the 65 year old or the 100 year old.
I had to write this post tonight. Not every post do I feel this way. Tonight, however, needed to have this post see itself against white paper and let me talk it out. I needed to tell companions about it so I might be closer to imitating a real life and therefore, like a child growing out of imitation of all that is around me new and exciting. Ah haa, I might just be edging forward to a new originality for myself. I don't believe in hope. Some of my pals know this about me. Yet, I do know that February 14th is a New Year for me and a full year without Lyn. And if I cannot hope, I can be glad to have this revelation today that without her companionship and during my settling into "aloneness" for this past year, I may have just arrived at explanation of why the loss of a true kindred spirit as Lyn was for me, I might find himself in a kind of "batshit crazy" state of mind. A state of some serious mental business. A mindset defining itself as that state of consciousness where the mind cannot discriminate between a life lived in the past, one in the here and now and one forecasting a life beyond the present.
I find it amusing that we draw the line between normal and loony based upon being able to know that the past and the future are non- existent states of the mind, while the present is all we can really experience. Yesterday won't be back and tomorrow never gets here we're told. Yet, I have lived in all three at once this year and it has had a tendency to wear me out emotionally. And I fear is has probably worn out a valued friendship or two that were once solid and true. I'm ready for my dues to have been paid. I mean, if I'm likely to go on living for a while, I'm ready for the bill to be taken off the books. I see no reason not to live on and live with all the gusto I've known my entire batshit crazy life. Especially now that I might have struck on some understanding of how the mind deals with grief in opposition to relative time. I have to believe I've just lived through Einstein's theory of relativity where space is curved and time may only be 60 seconds per minute to the minds of the "sane" traveling together on earth at less than the speed of light.
"Hey, bartender, pour me a double, will you?"
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