The Crack

I used to dream a hor­ri­ble dream when I was lit­tle. I was walk­ing along a path and along each edge there were very big peo­ple scream­ing at me. I always didn’t know why but I think I believed I deserved it. Or maybe I made that up because that is my nat­ural ten­dency, to believe that.

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Cut to my twenties…something turns off with my con­scious mind and I sim­ply inhabit my body. A human at 22 is some­thing great, phys­i­cally. It is rare to find an aware 22 year old. The rea­son, I think, is that their bod­ies are as per­fect as a human can be and impos­ing psy­chol­ogy on a per­fect body is a buzz killer. It is the time for the amaz­ing pos­si­bil­ity that life is as great as this body func­tions. For a few that hap­pens, but mostly we live our bodylife dur­ing that decade and we won­der about it later when some­thing painful wakes us up. I will speak for myself because some of you may be in the lucky cadre that lives asleep but in your bod­ies for­ever. You are few, but I respect your uncanny charm, even if I don’t buy a damn word of it. I digress (not really).

Any­way, so I am not twenty-five and phys­i­cally per­fect. I am 47 and my dreams (even really old ones) teach me things and I am lis­ten­ing and you know, for 47, I am still doing ok in my body. I just have this brain or spirit or psy­che that asks tough questions…Who was that scream­ing at a per­fectly good child? Are we every­one in our dreams even when we are 5? How could I have that row of yelling big peo­ple in me at five? How do I have myself and aware­ness and the other side of the coin – unaware­ness and just being, in my body, in this time and this place. I don’t know. I could not have had this con­ver­sa­tion 20 or 10 years ago.…time moves back­wards for aware­ness. Then a crack opens and there is no going back, but what hap­pens then after the crack is good, in the end, after pain and mourn­ing and feel­ing things that were impos­si­ble 20 or 10 years ago. I should men­tion here that some­one close to me recently cursed me and invited my life to play out only in my mirage of shame (see here), and even though I know my dreams will play with this curse, I am say­ing to you all now and here that I won’t eat that poi­son pie. If I do it is my ego ask­ing me to be awful so you will tell me I’m not. That is the worst kind of reas­sur­ance, don’t you think?

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And there I am hold­ing my son, one this week, who is only present and who is only feel­ing and with­out bound­aries and vul­ner­a­ble and some­times I am not up to that. I can’t be in the pres­ence of that. My own shame, worth­less­ness, seeps in. His shin­ing pres­ence is too much for me and I focus on the mun­dane, the shit he still makes like we all do. I have just barely enough of me to ask for help and I have a part­ner who sees some­thing of this in me and checks in, and I have the priv­i­lege of ask­ing my part­ner to take over while I go find myself…here, even though it is Mother’s Day and every day she works all day at this, this being in the pres­ence of pres­ence which is, for me, over­whelm­ing.
And I know that I am as good and flawed as you and that it there­fore does not mat­ter. By that I mean that if I know my shame or my good­ness is just like yours is to you, then we can just agree we are the same, flawed, per­fect. My shame is the same as yours and my essen­tial good­ness is the same as yours. Even though every­thing in me wants to tell a story to make me make worth­less­ness some­how spe­cial in its unique worth­less­ness, it isn’t. It is the same as yours, and so is the good­ness and there is my path, back through the crack to the essen­tial me, the part that con­nects to you and loses myself at times, here for instance, or in Rose’s undy­ing hope in us, or in some crazy, beau­ti­ful light glanc­ing off the stud on a punk’s leather jacket or the crack in a log, long dead, that makes remem­ber I am alive…for instance.