Ghost Houses 1972-92

Well, then, perhaps being born was the only viable solution. Nonetheless, it is fraught with its own perils. For one, life takes so long.

The long sweep of childhood and growing up is a journey into tedium. Day after day, they leave their wearing marks. Gradually, though, it became clear that I was being guided from somewhere. This guiding force was also chastising me, purging me. I have been aware of this quiet presence from very early on. It was with me wherever I went, denying me privacy, causing me to feel keenly my insignificance. Here I was, sitting in front of this invisible guide, living like a jerk in plain sight. The desire to do the right thing began to burn early.

But growing up is also a lesson in deception. You know, you have innocence as a child, and then when you grow up, you find the thing which is so respectable in the eyes of the Family and Society is turning you into the thing you blamelessly despised as a child. I strayed from the respectable pursuits and began a re-evaluation of my goals. The rift was still there, and unhealed, for all my growing up and being lulled by the long sweep of time. Now I felt severed from the throng. This old conflict reared up, plaguing me ceaselessly. Change. Reconsider. Repent of this. So I packed and left school for the California coast.

I didn’t find what I was looking for. There was great beauty, but with it, I carried shut up disappointment like a sleeping bag. I disguised my grief in incomprehensible poems and found I couldn’t deal with a steadily rising specter of unfulfilled, deep-seated needs and callings. God, emotions are unquenchable. Maya is an illusion, you know. Emotions are very real.

Well. Now home was gone. I had left home, and in a sense, home had folded up and left without me. I couldn’t go back...Now there was no home I could find, anywhere. Home was some haven, a fairy tale. Home was somewhere tucked deep inside my soul, and my handicap was that I could only look out; the entryway to my soul was shuttered up tight. How sacred then, is silence. Sometimes the deep seat of despair has no other course.

But this guide didn’t give up. It was as if another eye was hiding behind the veil of my face, recognizing old names and kindred spirit, and churning the pool of life, bringing the heirlooms of the deep just into sight. You can’t just give up when you can see the heirlooms. You have to keep trying to throw off the adversary, the long sweep of tedium and deception.

There is waiting, now. I wait. Evidently I will endure waiting all my life. I see now that to live is to endure.. Isn’t it true? You struggle to be true to those ideals that were obvious to you as a child, if you are lucky enough to remember them and be disgusted with what you have become in the meantime. There are heirlooms, but they are kept for you, safe, out of reach. There is a kindred spirit, but he is ahead, beyond sight. There is peace, and somewhere, there is a place called Home, but as yet, the foundations have not been carved in the heart deep enough to build them on, and I wander through ghost houses which are pale in the light.