Funny how it comes around just about every time, this time this year, just like last August. Somebody said August is the cruelest month.
Easily the hottest. A local 15 year old girl killed herself yesterday with a single shot to the head. Makes you wonder the who, when, where, how and big WHY.
Last August it was Mary in old Chicago town. The perfusionist. She was the one who called a wrong number out of desperation and, of course, I inherited the inevitable task of talking her through the drama of her life.
Hey, I answered the phone and kept her on the suicide hot line. It eventually produced basic peace of mind for her but nothing but angst, various poems and a well done intense piece entitled THE LAST SEVEN PAGES about a book she was working on.
Walking through fires. It was a tough one. All about listening, a lot of listening, recognizing various faces of fear, seeing truth. Letting go of it. Moving on. Finding balance.
So here it is August again. Out of curiosity I called one of those 900 numbers and left a message. “Independent nomad seeks open minded spirituality adept woman for casual relationship.”
Had three answers and the Relationship Express is humming down the tracks stopping at stations named Loneliness, Emptiness, Friendship, mid-life Crisis, Ticking Time Bombs and Endless Conversations.
Rhapsody of the Disenchanted was playing Still Looking After All These Years, Where’s The One, past scenic views of Depression, Melancholy, Trust, Hope, Anxiety, Doubt, Fear, and I’m transiting through the ‘listening’ role with a couple of new women. Both from Montana through entirely different routes of self discovery, broken relationships and renewal. We're riding the range mending fences, setting up new parameters.
Now I love women, yes sirree, well all right then, but I know better now and it’s just this curious nature of heart and mind to be out there making new connections. I’m not saving anybody.
All the stations have various levels of becoming. Passengers entwined and stuck on levels banging their heads and hearts against transparencies grasping through their Gestalt shattering mirrors and delusions. Working out in their private emotional, physical, spiritual fitness zones. Levels replace levels. Each level has a center. The vortex is the equilibrium, the source.
As one woman, an educator, said to me, “We are works in progress.” She’s divorced, with two kids, a supportive x-factor and looking for a friend.
“I’m just doing my work,” I told her plain and simple.
“That’s a powerful statement,” she said.
Now I wouldn’t be the first person to say it’s healing work but I’ve learned to listen. Not all the clowns are in the circus.
I make it perfectly clear to these kind ladies that I am not in the rescuing business anymore. Nope. No way Jose.
Honesty is the best policy and I’m not in the mood to waste their time, my time and our collective energies establishing a Heavy Deep & Real relationship. The good old HDR.
The emotional bottom line is they are looking for a kind, sensitive man who won’t screw around and screw up their lives. They’ve been cheated on, dumped on and left taking care of the kids. They need someone who will listen and not say, “I can fix it!”
They know what’s what. They know how the world works, how the heart beats. How any system will do whatever is necessary to perpetuate and sustain itself. They have their own toolbox. Some know the map is not the territory.
You don’t need a compass in the land of dreams.
We're all passengers on the train of life riding the rails following our spirit. The simple answer is to listen, stay detached, share, establish levels of responsibility, emotional connections on the heart level, understand healthy limitations and boundaries and remain open to the big picture. Paying attention.
“Not too much wisdom and not too much compassion,” a monk said, blowing the flame out.
The Beginning
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