abide

A doctor said to me once, or it could have been many times, “in your family there is no abiding;” in order to be well, I’ve worked very hard at constancy - too hard, to the point of rigid. I have gained much in my efforts to understand abiding - often as not a result of “reaction formation.” My father, may he rest in peace, would say when I was quite young, “you don’t follow through with things;” good son that I am, I’ve gone out of my way to complete - everything, all too often forsaking wisdom. No small irony that his wife, my mother quit him, or more accurately they each other when I was half-way through high school. It was a predictable outcome to the adage “Marry in haste and repent in leisure,” for leisure was at that time being pruned from the American landscape in preparation for our nation’s last great war - destruction of the middle class. Small wonder I am fascinated by Lao Tzu’s admonition “man will quit just before success.”  Nor is this essay meant as an indictment of my parent’s largely successful efforts to better the world by raising moral children however dicey a proposition that may be - same for the doctor remarking about my family constellation through the prism of his prejudice. Rather I would encourage anyone reading from curiosity about “abiding” to hang with what it is they want - not so much so that one’s proportions become distorted or perspective dimmed, but in the kindly way I remember pop advocating the best for me. Near as can I understand, his expectations were that I pursue an objective for the satisfaction that comes from personal accomplishment - this essay for example. I’m 6 years later working my way back into a story about a character I’d conceived of while relearning how to love after the collapse of my 3rd marital adventure, and I mean to know the end of this story. Yet like all things different, writing a novel can be fearsome and daunting, no differently than dating a new love; moving to a new nation or forsaking erroneous convictions. So when I hit the seemingly impermeable barrier of writing on a scale larger than essays and poetry, my previous explorations of persistence allowed a certain latitude for moving sideways onto temporary projects such as an essay on what it means to “abide” so that the complex ideas inherent to a longer narrative could percolate. It is from my struggle to understand abiding that I have hopefully gained some flexibility - to not become hardened or calcified as happened to the neck of my father’s trochanter when it broke within 10 months of his death. I’m not sure I’d want to know what my father learned in those last 10 months about abiding but it is funnier than hell to know he’d be laughing about my trying to explain it in this essay. If you think I’m kidding; consider the 4 go-to expressions he carried during that 10 month march to the grave; “going down the road;” “don’t get stuck in concrete;” “what is your purpose here on earth” and “what time is it?”

I have recently applied for a visa extension for living in C_______ E_______, not because there is not much that needs to be done in my own nation, or that I have abandoned efforts for the free and democratic ideal my parents inspired, but because for me to produce creatively I must live within my means, which could nearly be accomplished in the U.S. whereas in South America it may be barely accomplished; never mind that my arrival coincided with Christmas amongst strangers or that moments before making that sentence I had learned Dharma was the name of the band creating a music video downstairs on the patio of the hostel where I was living - I can almost hear pop with a knowing wink whisper “synchronicity,” for Dharma is from the Bhagavad Gita. Having no single western meaning it can be loosely parsed from Wikipedia as: the classical Sanskrit noun dharma, a derivation from the root dhr, which has a meaning of “to hold, maintain, keep.” The sound you hear is pop cackling - synchronicity, synchronicity, synchronicity from somewhere - lord knows where. Nor is this effort to seek creative sanctuary an easy passage; to-be-expected stressors tap into a manic aspect of my honestly acquired stick-to-itiveness and commensurate blinders that confuse fear - fear that in former times for human kind informed our species with a “fight or flight” prompt that is now marketed as “Jonesing for adrenaline.” In C______ E______ I was alone and impoverished - still am, somewhat less so; isolated from family and friends - either of which I’m never quite sure where to stand. Whether fortunate or not, my socialization dictates that one find answers within - why do I tend toward solitude? I have found amongst my abundant defects, I cling - a not entirely fair pejorative. It seems during those hazy crazy days of “the sixties” the CIA used a militant feminist - Gloria Steinem to racialize the inherent decency of the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) and conflate the emerging dignity of the Black Panther movement with a contrived innuendo of the subordination of black woman by black men which then became code for a denigration of the black male as well as a generally demeaning connotation for any male desire to companionship and love within the context of gender politics. To this day I veer from anything that smacks of neediness - not unlike President Obama’s Oligarchy-like born-again adherence to the corporate putsch made manifest in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Is that itself a reaction-formation to Ralph Ellison’s chapter “Battle Royal” within the novel Invisible Man? i d k, just askin’. Our president’s changing interpretation for “The Audacity of Hope” severely complicates efforts to appreciate what it means to abide, and more sorrowfully how to attribute a fair evaluation to a hideously distorted term in office - twisted by the ruling elite against the largely decent efforts of our nation’s first black executive to steer a moderate course for our embattled ship of state. 

Back to the fictional narrative of my Arcadian transition into a life of synchronicity and creativity; the Swedish All-Girl-Feminist-Choir-full-of-hate had by this time evaporated as if by starlight - an illumination seemingly from the evanescent transcendence of a Lone—Traveler-German-Sociologist-Fraulein-passing-through as gently as the former had rankled and carped its way thru for any but the faithful; pop was fond of the expression “awe” but always used it with awe; sitting here reflecting, I have only a pale glimpse of what awe may have meant to him - but it brings tears to my eyes - tears I am grateful for however much more grateful I may be for the warm loving kindness of that transient Fraulein who in the blink of an eye managed to warm the hurt of my hard hurt heart enough to hear my great grandmother Munner exclaiming, “How Grand!” Still, this essay is meant to tease a clearer understanding of what it is to abide - “to accept or act in accordance with” (a rule, decision or recommendation) - informal definition: “be unable to tolerate” (someone or something). As an artist I find myself cued to stimuli, whether the coping of a line from a crack in the sidewalk to the illumination of the crease of a smile - artist is not a lifestyle I’d advocate to anyone, for there is no surcease from patterns of relatedness, be it clusters of hectoring within a cohort to the distracted glance of a harried clerk in a government office; so how is one to abide all of the indications - to reconcile the admonition of free thinking with the chaste allure of a foreign culture’s mating dance; or the wisdom of a Bacchanal with the clarity of a tantric vision devoid of delusion. Am I to predicate decisions on the flaring fury of another’s lack of containment - do I aver the sensuous content of the flesh because of a fundamentalist proscription from those fearing their own appetites - I don’t know.

I do know that in and amongst the “norms” there are sad individuals in the world who rather than do honor to themselves or be mindful of cues from others, will continue to foist themselves uninvited, unwelcome and oblivious to all recommendation. How does one warmly abide such aggressive behavior - be it from a nation, a child, animal or tragic figure? In the world we now inhabit it is becoming critically important to forge strong alliances of like-minded people capable of working in concert. It is also critically important to divest oneself of unhealthy interactions in as peaceful a manner as is possible - how does one accomplish that and still abide. How does one define and enforce a boundary from the flavor of a menacing malevolence and not exacerbate the fear masked behind such purulent behavior? how does anyone encourage the Nietzsche admonition Bob Dylan shared on Theme Time Radio Hour - “Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him. We should also respect the enemy in our friend.” It is very important to chose one’s influences carefully; just look at the buffoons applying for work as Drumpf’s apprentices. This a man who has lost more money than he has made, and who after being born on third base can’t make it home without being carried on the backs of people starving for heroism - the penultimate “naked emperor” - I cannot abide, or more importantly the person I hope to be only more so, will not abide such chicanery. But there is a flip side to the covert and dishonest flimflam that passes for political dialogue today - full disclosure. Should there be filters on what can be spoken of or how. I believe no, not between consenting adults - it is with the process of identifying “consenting” adults that this free thinking concept becomes dicey. To anyone who reads this, you are free to go, from the title to the conclusion - exactly the same as if we were in conversation. Me - I have limits to  what I will listen to from others; when I’ve reached those limits i remove myself, my bad. But just the same as I would never insist that you read much, less believe what I write, I resist anyone saying what I am allowed to write, or to say for that matter. So there is truth in part to the good Dr’s observations about my family - there are things I cannot, i will not abide. 

Of late, some upon whom I have “cast the ‘cast’ in my eye” have privately found my normal reserve and reverent adoration to be explicit and ribald, not because I wish to offend, but because I no longer care to offend my self. The act of denial of my own sexual nature is onerous and fake; nor am I asking for license to offend or disrespect anyone’s sense of appropriateness. It is not my manner to intrude where I am not expressly invited. But for me to be invited someplace, I would rather go as myself - not a cardboard cutout of some avatar conjured for acceptance by others. Wherever I go I must go as the confused, sometimes irascible but always struggling-to-be-free-and-honest loving heart I nurture and try to enlarge for company with anyone who believes enough in their own unique beauty for us to as Leonard Cohen has sung “be alone together, let’s see if we’re that strong.” It is a rich irony that I should be repulsed by an irrationally determined individual who feels so strongly as to “track” another’s migration on social network platforms after being “blocked,” one after another. Nor do I ascribe malice to such irrational determination - what I experience is a level of personal disrespect for oneself subjecting what hopefully remains a healthy loving heart in the face of strict disinterest. When I approach any woman I find attractive and with whom I discern some measure of reciprocal erotic affection. I must be free of delusions; I mean to hear, respect and comply with any level of expressed disinterest; there is no more detestable location on the planet than in the company of anyone who wishes you gone. My hope is that the more honest I am with myself about what I hunger for, the less starved I become and the more peace I might carry with me out of, or into the “big event horizon in the sky” I wish to carry peace to others who may not have carried enough with them from this weird-as-fuck world where we struggle to feel what we seem unable to make - love.

P.S. I now sit in an airplane on the tarmac preparing to depart L______P______ for M________ U_______. A consigliere recommended to me by my E________ hosts determined to purloin $50 - 1/2 of a $100 “facilitator’s fee” I volunteered in part as introduction to an attorney to prepare the $450 — now moot Visa extension as well as an acquisition of $50 worth of marijuana. To my thinking $50 was more than fair for such service, so when immediately after the introduction, my consigliere became inaccessible, non-responsive and dodgy, I got an irreversible sense that after three months of earnest efforts toward the community in which I meant to reside and contribute to through to my death had become fulsome with recrimination and innuendo about a medical marijuana strategy about which I’d shared openly from the initial Christmas dinner onward. The good doctor was right - I cannot abide some things - lucky me.