I began this essay in November 2014, then read 5 paragraphs of bullshit at Christmas which became February 2015; March 2015; April 2015 . . . I could barely read what was written - all fake. I was alone within a community I had chosen at the end of a long journey after my father’s death. I did not belong and would never be able to fake it. Three years ago, at the onset of this major life transition and full with a grief I could barely face, an existing breech between ma and myself was torn asunder which no amount of hard physical labor could expunge; with no other channel available, I began to write letters. During this very cold past winter my greatest warmth came from working on the portrait of a “perfect stranger” with whom I had once shared a four hour flight; this woman had thoroughly captivated my imagination and my heart, but outside of drawing her I was unable to express myself. I had begun drawing her repeatedly during this upheaval having obtained her kind permission obliquely through fb. Her features seemed to guide me through the labyrinth of grief. Where I have struggled to be gentle with ma - to reassure her that her hardscrabble logic had found traction in my fighting-to-stay-open heart and mind - the photos of this stranger from which I worked simply drew love from me, so I reached out to this perfect stranger asking her to witness my words to ma as an oversight, again obliquely, hoping my affection for a stranger might attenuate language which I’ve come to understand can be rapier-like, hardly kind. I included 2 other muses, women I have known from well-to-barely, but mostly addressed this perfect stranger in the portrait and ma. The portraits improved, but as you might imagine, it got weird. While this convoluted grieving process infused the portraits with feeling that I may not have accessed otherwise, and my overlong restricted heart warmed for ma through this act of intentional writing, I am now faced with a complex of rich though incomplete feelings: gratitude to ma for my existence; gratitude to my muses for their generosity of spirit and special gratitude to this woman in the portrait for allowing me to love her vicariously with abandon while having no idea what she feels - however confused that may seem.
Confusion factors into some of the reasons why the concept of fake holds so much fascination and is such a challenge for me to depict. Why, for example would I tear my chest open and share something real with you - another form of stranger? Is it an effort to create belonging which is absent from my life, or is it a real effort to find the heart of existence? As you may imagine possessing such an amorphous perimeter of self and other, my previous 3 marriages have been evolving works in progress - more work than progress. Yet as with any skill, relationships tend to improve the more you persevere, and while poor choices can as easily serve to focus one’s areas of weakness, they may also lead to labyrinths in which to hide from growth. With enough poor choices they either become lessons from which to learn hard personal truths, or millstones dragging you to the bottom. Had I stopped at wife number one, I’m not sure whether I could have developed the intestinal fortitude adequate to expose my tenuous grasp of reality with whomever might be reading this essay just now. However, any anxiety I might feel about your reading this essay is nothing compared to the threat I experience from a handful of people capable of applying remarkably precise filters to a media stream which has become nothing more than a worldwide database as easily manipulated as the bank tracks your financial transactions. Either of which is dwarfed by the stomach-turning anxiety that comes from facing one’s deepest fear which is for me loving and being loved - big surprise.
You may be saying to yourself, “with three failed marriages, what the fuck does this guy expect?” A fair question - I expect love. Nor am I suggesting there is anyone on the planet responsible for my lack of it. My life lessons have convinced me that nearly all human activities not specifically in service of love are efforts to assuage an emptiness from the lack of love so well described when Peggy Lee sang, “is that all there is?” Does this mean your favorite sports star is a surrogate for a brother afraid of his own hate, or any fascination for celebrity could be attributed to an older sister who made you walk behind her to school? Fake is when something is trotted out as real, by someone who knows full well and good that what is being proffered is not real, or worse partially real which is almost as bad maybe worse. The best example of this may be the cynical efforts by community leaders to inspire the young poor that somehow excelling at a playground sport might provide a path out of the hell which the uber-rich have created to neuter their opponents - the 99.999% rest of us. The difference between this and the gladiator spectacles of old is so minute that the entertainment industry is entirely comfortable dressing up today’s star as hero of the downtrodden in one sort of uprising film or another; always, however stopping just short of a careful examination of the root causes for our alienation from each other.
The fundamentals of salvation are reserved for the wizards of religion who are in no great hurry to vacate their positions of authority with all the financial perks and adulation which come from rescuing humanity from itself. The only real danger for the zealots of our age will be if there is any validity to claims of afterlife and the consequences of bad living. What is heaven, what is hell? Damn good questions except that the only meaningful conversation is whether we are making either condition real for ourselves and those around us at this instant - anything else is posturing. To live a conviction other than how to tangibly improve the lives of those around you or those with whom who share the planet can only result in greater doubt, more fear and stronger hatred for anyone not sharing your conviction - possibly including any actual savior, who I believe, as many do, resides within our own troubled hearts. Where the zealots and I part company is whether higher consciousness is mine or theirs. Today too many assume roles in the salvation of others, perhaps due to the emptiness each feels within their own skin - why else would I take the time to share these feeble reasons for doing good. Truth be told, it beats hell out of acting on fear or occasional fits of pique which are nearly always directly attributable to fear.
jts 1/4/2015
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