I didn’t make it to the gym because my eyes decided now is not a good time to go. Got the name of an opthamologist in December but somehow haven’t made an appointment to see him.
No good reason, no good excuse.
I tell Neruda that familiar scent caught me off guard today. Funny thing is I expected it, but what surprised me was the wave of memory it brought along with it.
Pablo tells me he has words and I say I know and recite a few for him that might be appropriate…maybe.
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
Brother Pablo chuckles and says I can do better, so I pull another rabbit out:
“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”
“That’s better my friend, but you must go deeper to swim in my pool.”
I shake my head at Brother Pablo and tell him some things are better left unsaid where they can be plausibly denied even if they are known to be true.
He shakes a bony finger at me and I roll my eyes in a fashion teenage girls wish they could master. “Ok man, let’s go deep.”
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
Brother Pablo congratulates me for speaking my truth and I say it is just one of them, they are legion.
Sometimes Your Truth Remains Silent
Donna Summer is singing Last Dance and I am lost in time and space, lost meaning I have chosen to take a seat in a place you cannot gain entrance without invitation and a guide.
I can return to the present any time I choose but for now I prefer exploring the past and peering into the future.
Sometimes the fine folks search through the archives and spent time reading and re-reading posts but they rarely tell me the reasons why.
iTunes must be on some kind of 70’s playlist because we have moved onto Kiss singing I Was Made To Love You. It makes me smile because in a not so strange coincidence my Facebook feed was filled with pictures from their last concert in LA.
Back in the land between nod and conscious thought I hear my daughter ask if I am wearing one of grandpa’s white undershirts.
“Yep, he had a million of these. I grabbed some. It is your dad’s security blanket.”
“I didn’t realize how skinny grandpa got.”
“Yeah, he didn’t have guns like I do.”
She rolls her eyes as I flex both arms.
“Almost 50 and I am getting close to being able to curl 50 in each arm again. Warn those boys, dad is a dangerous man.”
“Oy abba” is all she says as she walks away.
****
Before I can slip back into the warmth of reverie Donna Summer returns on the headphones and this time she brings along a favorite clip but it only occupies my attention for the briefest of moments.
There is a knot in my back that requires several ibuprofen and maybe an extended massage to work out. There is a sense of something coming down the road, a feeling that distracts me because it is the silent truth I won’t speak out loud.
Now I hear Closer playing and I think back to old conversations and remember when we said we just wanted to spend time together. It was and it is true.
Brother Pablo was more elegant about how he put such things but he would understand there is a depth that you can’t just achieve. In part it is chemical and in part it is 10,000 hours of conversation.
The funny thing is all these years later it occurs to me we just barely scratched the surface and with the additional life experience could go so much deeper now, but silent truths won’t allow for it today and maybe any day.
Jericho
Sometimes people talk about Jericho and inquire as to whether I have ever been there. I always nod my head and say I have.
“The real city?”
“The real one.”
“The one they talk about in the bible?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“You mean you have been to the Holy Land?”
“Yes sir, more than once.”
Life in the Bible Belt brings those sort of conversations out more frequently than I would have guessed they would. I suppose if I had thought about it I wouldn’t be surprised, but I have been distracted by other things.”
Tonight someone mentioned Jericho to me and I thought about a person, remembered a few things and kept silent about them because they are tied into that silent truth mentioned not long ago.
****
One of the guys who worked with dad told me once about how my father saved his job and how he would be forever grateful. He said my dad was fearless and that if I was anything like him he was sure I was fearless too.
Sometimes I think about that moment and how proud I was to hear this about my dad and how I knew fearless was both true and false.
If you asked me about it I would say I know it because I think of myself in that manner too. I think about the silent truth and how I fear it being true and I fear it being false.
I think about it and hear someone say you’re Orrie Wilner’s son and you don’t give a fuck what people think or don’t.
They are right, I don’t. There isn’t time.
But sometimes when I am cognizant of being on the outside looking in I wonder if not caring is a mistake and if caring is one too. Both can be true and both can be false.
Sometimes we intentionally go into battle because keeping busy prevents us from digging deep enough in the dirt in the backyard to unearth the treasures that lie beneath the surface.
Easier to let them slumber where they lie than to wake them up and allow them to confront you with realities that force you to either defend or move from your space.
“Someday, somewhere – anywhere, unfailingly, you’ll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.”
―
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