Passion vs Safety (The Result)

I mad some decisions today. I decided where I wanted to be, and I went there. The result was a mixed bag.

I saw friends that I would see less of and others I would see more of.

I mourn the loss and celebrate the gain.

I was given a choice between a simple, comforting safety and a free, vagrant passion. I could stay where I was in a safe, warm cave. Or, I could go out into the rain and follow the songs of desire that I heard floating through the trees.

Today, I saw a man play guitar until he bled. At first, it was almost transcendent, to see a man playing with such force and passion. In what kind of pain, I don't know. But, he didn't stop he just kept playing. It was incredible. But after a time he still refused to stop. He kept going long after the blood had spackled the guitar's body and the strings turned rusty-red. The blood splashed onto his thumb and dripped into his palm. But he didn't stop. I brought him a bandage and a cloth to clean the guitar and cover his wound, but he kept playing. Eventually he stopped. He wiped the guitar, to an extent, but then, ignoring the bandages, he kept going.

He was lost in something. Something that I could not see, or feel, or understand. But, I could smell it. And I could hear it. He was longing for something that, no matter how hard he played, he could not find. There was desperation in his face, and his voice was as strung out as his body. Wound tight. He played as if he were playing to an empty room that he only wanted to be filled with ears and hearts that would listen and hear. But, I was there, and there were others. They tried to sing with him, but his songs didn't call for harmony. Not the sweet, soaring harmony that the girls offered. I watched, and as my awe turned to something small and afraid, all I wanted to do was tell him that it was okay.

It was okay to stop. It was okay to lick his wounds and clean his instrument. He didn't need to get blood on his hands. But... I couldn't have told him that. It wasn't my place. I brought him bandages and a cloth. I placed them at his feet. I could not make him pick them up.

This is the world that I about to enter. This is the life that I choose to lead. I will bring bandages and cloth. I will bring what modicum of hope that I can spare. I will stand on the other side of the valley and I will scream into the rain that martyrdom and suicide are not synonyms. My words will mix with the water, and they will flow across wet pavement. Into a culvert? Into the ditch? Or to water some tree of life? I don't know, but I choose this.

I choose the bleeding man who wants something I cannot know, and I will offer what I can. I will lay them at his feet.

Let the next wave crash.

"Alone"

When I was in 6th grade, my teacher had us all write poems. Being a "sensitive" child, I was overjoyed. I wrote a poem about being lonely, feeling like I had nobody to talk to. We had moved into town just a few months ago, and I hadn't made any friends yet, so the poem (if I remember correctly) was a pretty good representation of how I felt at the time.

When I showed the poem to my teacher, he laughed. He knew that I had 6 siblings, and he reminded me of this fact. "What do you know about being lonely?" he said.

What do I know about being lonely?

I think that my 6th grade teacher and I have very different definitions of what it is to be lonely. I did not correlate loneliness and lack of people around. I had it more aligned with the level of mutual understanding between the people who were around.

The sheer lack of people is a form of loneliness that few people have had to endure, and it is so painful that it's one of the most commonly used forms of torture. This other kind of lonliness, I am willing to bet, is far more common, and in some ways harder to recover from.

When all you lack is human interaction period, anything will do. Which is why solitary confinement is useful for interrogations, those kept in solitary will talk to anyone, will do almost anything for human interaction.

When the problem is mutual understanding, however, the solution is a little more difficult. The main source of the problem is within the lonely person. You don't feel understood, at times you feel like you're going crazy, and you're afraid to let anybody in. There can be a million reasons for this stuff. Maybe you're afraid of letting someone get that close. Maybe you're afraid of looking weak, or needy. Or, maybe you think that by sharing what's bugging you, you could risk chasing away those close to you.

Maybe my teacher didn't think I was capable of experiencing that depth of emotion at the age of 11. If that's the case then I don't blame him. Either way, I'm stuck with the same conundrum as I was in 6th grade, feeling apart, or disconnected, from those around me. And, just like in 6th grade, I'm afraid to take a leap of faith. I'm afraid to open, or I'm too tired, or I know that they don't want me to dump on them.

I can hear my teacher's voice in my head. "You live with 5 other guys, what do you know about being lonely?"

"Nothing sir. I don't know nothing."

Halfway

Imagine that you are standing in a knee-deep bog. You don't know how it became so deep, and you have a very hard time making any forward motion. The last thing you remember is running, freely through a field of tall grass and blue skies. But, now, all you see is grey and seafoam green in every direction.

Directly in front of you is a small pile of boulders. You have to climb them. You've climbed higher mountains before, this is no big deal, but you don't really know how to start this sort of thing from knee-high mud. They are just a few steps away, but you find that ever since the mud rose, your steps have been far shorter than normal.

You stand for half a minute, looking up at the grey. You search for blue, you search for a break in the clouds. That's the funny thing about clouds, you can never tell how thick they are. Sometimes, the entire sky will be completely grey, and some rogue wind current will brush away a thin layer of cloud, as if to remind you that there are other colors out there. But, today, there seems to be no friendly wind, or if there is, then the clouds are just too thick.

You stare anyway, maybe there will be a bird. You haven't seen much sign of life beyond the odd frog or beetle for a very long time. Sometimes you think that you can hear a goose, or maybe a loon, but they're always on the other side of the fog.

You remember when you had traveling companions, but it seems like you lost them somehow. Did they give up? Just, drop themselves into the muck and not get back up? Did they drown? Did they stumble at some point, and fall face first into the bog? If they did, then why didn't you help them? Why didn't you go back and pick them up?

You can't stand for too long, or else you begin to sink, so you press on, getting closer to the boulder pile ever second. You think about how, maybe, you'll get halfway there before you can rest, and then only be able to get halfway and then halfway again, and then halfway again. You giggle to yourself. Maybe you could prove Zeno right. One of your friends would have laughed at that one. If only you could remember who.