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There is a quiet sadness and a disoriented desperation that permeate the air in a nightclub when the white lights go on and the bouncers herd everyone out. Closing time. Very few people are simply tired. They’ve partied as hard as they could, and they’re ready to go home and sleep. They’re content, but exhausted. Others aren’t finished. They don’t want the music and booze to stop flowing. Partying at the club is an escape for them. For one reason or another, they are in no hurry to return to their regular lives, and the white lights always kick on way too early, dispelling all illusions they’ve erected between themselves and reality. Some are searching for something – adventure, escape, reminders of better days, an omen, drugs, a one-night-stand – and they haven’t found it yet. For them, the last note of the last song is the sound of failure. The window of opportunity has closed. It is time to go home empty-handed. All of this combines into a dreary emotional sludge that’s as real and as powerful as the mottled stench of stale beer, cigarette smoke, perfume, and sweat. Everyone wanders about like lost sheep. They must know where the door is, because they walked through it to enter. They must know it’s time to go because the bouncers and the PA system tell them it’s time. And yet they meander about, in no great hurry to go, as if everyone is waiting to hear the answer to an unspoken question born out of a communal state of denial: what’s next? On one night or another, I have been all of these people, including the bouncer who just wants the sheeple to leave so he can go home and shower the stink of the place off of his skin. On other nights, I am none of these people. I’m simply an empathetic watcher, spending time with these children of the night, experiencing their condition until the sun comes up, because I cannot sleep due to reasons all of my own. Americans have become the Children of Now. We focus on the present. We scramble about, always in a hurry, always looking for ways to save time, always seeking new, better, and faster ways to satisfy our addiction to instant gratification. We live ever in the moment, and yet we scurry about so frantically that we often do not take time to actually enjoy the present. There’s just too much to do, too much stress, too many obligations, and too many time slots filled into our calendars. It seems there is never enough time. I must count myself among my fellow Americans. If life is a rat race, in recent years I’ve been among the most fevered and frantic forerunners, running so fast that the wind shear makes my eyes water. Recently I stopped running. I stopped, looked around, and asked myself, “Is it true? Is there truly a shortage of time? How is it possible that I work so hard, spend so much time, and expend so much energy but have so little to show for it?”
I threw away the list of unimportant things. I made another list of things that have to be done, whether they’re a priority or not (work, paying bills, cleaning house, buying groceries, etc.) Considering these two lists, I realized I do not have enough time in one day to accomplish everything every day. However, it turns out that I do have enough hours in a week. I can accomplish everything I need to do and almost everything I want to do, every week. I’ve tried this new schedule for two weeks, and I have yet to stick to it 100%. I’ve found that a few things from the unimportant list manage to creep in, even though I supposedly threw them away. Video games and movies are prime examples of these. But compliance with my schedule isn’t the focus. I concentrate on the fact that it is possible to work towards all of the important priorities in my life every week, if I want to. I have rediscovered something that many Americans have forgotten, or never learned at all: Living a disciplined life offers a subtle and profound satisfaction that cannot be achieved in any other fashion. Life is chaotic insanity. Most of us have little control over the forces and events that affect our lives. However, I can control some things, and I can control how I react to things that are beyond my control. At the beginning of every day, I never know what the world holds in store for me, but I don’t stress over it, because I wake, knowing what I intend to accomplish during the day. I have already identified tasks that must be accomplished and tasks that I really want to accomplish. I’ve identified the general sequence and timing of these accomplishments, with the understanding that I may need to change things if the world is being a bitch today. I find reassurance and peace in this, to be able to say with certainty, “I know what I am going to accomplish today.” When the day is done and I’m lying in bed, that sense of reassured peace transforms into a deep satisfaction if I can review the day and know that I achieved all (or most) of what I set out to do. It pleases me to know that I finished what I started, and that my work has been done well. I’m still just as busy and I’m still running just as fast as I was before I stopped and prioritized, but I’m happier than before, because now I feel less frantic or desperate. I have a sense of empowerment and a sense that I’m moving in a chosen direction. Beforehand I was running for my life, like some victim in a horror-slasher movie. I had no direction, no sense. I was just running as fast and as hard as I could, trying to stay ahead of… something. Now I’m running just as hard, but I’m in a marathon. I have mile markers and a finish line. I have rewards for finishing. For centuries, creative men have labored to accurately and adequately express their love for women. Poets, authors, painters, sculptors, musicians – all of these and more have spent lifetimes trying to show the world how powerfully they love. I cannot say if these men truly understood the nature of love or not. I do know that none of them have understood love in the same fashion as I do, or, if they did, they did not understand the nature of our society or the world that mankind has made. True love is quite possibly the most powerful force on Earth. It is a beautiful, pure force, and like all great powers, it is exceedingly rare, with many imitators and imposters that obscure the genuine emotion. True love isn’t flashy. It’s that extra boost of joy that makes a good day into a spectacular day. It’s that quiet strength and hope that makes bad times bearable. It’s a subtle assurance that settles into our hearts like super glue, making us stronger because we know – we feel – that we are not alone in this world. No matter what life throws at us, we know that at least one person knows us, understands us, accepts us, and loves us. True love is the force that’s created when two lost soul mates find one another and rejoin. Despite the notions propagated by movies and TV, such a union doesn’t happen very often, and when it does, the resulting light is too beautiful, too intense, and too wonderful for the rest of mankind to endure. Some will covet it for themselves and will go to any length to make it their own, not understanding that they can’t have someone else’s light it without destroying it. Some will seek to snuff it out directly, simply because they cannot bear the contrast that true love strikes against their own dim and unfulfilled lives. Some will seek to study and dissect it. Others will strive to buy or sell it. Many will be drawn to this love light, just because it gives them hope, but they won’t see that they’re trampling and suffocating it until it goes out forever. Given the opportunity, the world of mankind will destroy true love where ever and when ever it is found. It is for this reason that I consider all these poets and other love-struck men to be complete idiots. If they understood the truth of love and the truth of the world, they would never sing the praises of love. They would never tell the world of their discovery. They would never share their joy. It would be a secret known only to them and their soulmate, a wondrous treasure hidden away from the world, a concealed source of strength and light that they’d die to protect. And what if I’m wrong about the world? What if it isn’t as bleak as I claim? Even so, true love should still be revered and kept secret. Love is a miracle, but if a person speaks of it everyday, then it eventually becomes just that – an everyday, mundane, routine. I. Love. You. Can you imagine three words that contain more power? If we do have a shard of immortality in us, these three words are surely the only way to wake it and invoke it while we still live in the flesh. And yet, how many people say them without meaning them, without feeling them, without even being conscious that they’re saying them? How many times have you heard some one end a phone conversation by saying “love you” with the same tone of voice they’d use to order a pound of ham at the deli? If you want love to last, if you want it to remain powerful and special, you must treat it as something that is unique, fragile, and essential to your continued existence. Say the words without saying them, through everything that you do or don’t do. Never make these three words part of a casual conversation. Never use them as an excuse, bribe, or apology. When you say them, speak them just as I have written them above: in a sentence and paragraph all of their own. Don’t hide them in a flock of other words. Whisper them to your soulmate so that only she can hear. Don’t let the world know! Last of all, only say them when you truly and completely feel it, and never expect your soul mate to say them back to you in response. If she feels it and wants to share it at that moment, then relish her response. Otherwise, trust in the power of your connection. Be assured that she will speak those words to you when she’s ready, and when she does say them, you’ll know she feels them and means them with every atom of her being. To those blessed few soulmates who have found each other, I urge you to keep your secret safe. For those of you still searching, I urge you to keep looking, keep living, keep trying. You may not succeed, but trying and failing will give you a better life than not trying at all. For those of you who have lost their love or given up the search, I urge you to find that spark inside yourself. If you’re alive, it must be buried in there somewhere. Find the strength to try again. Don’t accept that fate. Don’t die without feeling love’s light in your heart. I once defined “soul mates” as “two people who are fated to complete one another as if each were only half of a unique whole.” I thought that a woman must exist who could make me happier than anyone else on Earth. We’d be on the same wavelength, one mind and one heart in two bodies, bound by bonds that no science could hope to explain.
I abandoned that definition. In fact, I ceased to believe in soul mates all together.
This is for one of Shannon’s former students – an intelligent, kind, beautiful young woman. Written on September 11th, 2003 We never know what effect our words will have on others, how our words will connect others to us. The woman who wrote her words in 2005 had no idea that they would affect Shannon in this way. Since I learned the words to ask the question, I have wondered why I exist. As a child I imagined I was intended for something great, some awesome destiny. The feeling persisted into adolescence and adulthood, though by the time I was grown I had put it aside with other childish things. But the questions remained: Why am I here? What am I meant to do? Pain taught me that it is wrong to live for another, to expect them to magically instill happiness and dispel all woes, but the same pain made me believe in the existence of soul mates. I realized that a woman exists out there somewhere who I can love better than anyone else, a woman who will never be whole without me just as I cannot be whole without her, and to find her, to complete us both – well, that would truly be a great and wonderful destiny. And so that is my answer to the question. Why do I exist? I exist because you exist. Since the day I was born, I have carried and protected a piece of your spirit within me, just as you have part of me inside your heart. It must be this way because we both have our moats, walls, and traps to keep the world at bay. The part of me that is in you will open your heart from the inside, just as your spirit in me will allow you to walk through my walls. I have no defenses against you, no protection, but I do not fear you because to hurt me is to hurt yourself. I have a puncture in my heart that flares with pain like an angry sun. It is a hole without bottom, a gaping maw that can drink oceans and still thirst, devour planets and still hunger. You are the only one who can mend it. You have the missing piece. I know you understand me. I know you have emptiness in you as well. You must, because I have the missing shard right here with me. You will know me when you find me. I am the one who holds peace in my hands. In the darkest night, you are safe in my arms. No shadow will have you while I breathe. I am the one who knows you are still a child inside, and I love you for it. I am the one who will accept you, never judge you. I am the one who will give you wings to fly. I am the mountain that will protect you when you tire of flying. I know how to touch you before you even know yourself. I can give your body everything it craves. I can cherish everything your body can offer. I am the scent that lingers in your mind as you wake. I am the voice you hear as you drift into sleep. I am the reason you sometimes smile or laugh without knowing why. I am the bird in the cage of your heart, always singing, never letting you abandon your search for me. I am the one you see when you stand before the mirror and look into your own eyes. I am your friend and your lover, your knight and your fool, your angel and your demon, your master and your slave. I am me. I am yours. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Author’s Note: I wrote these words in 2005. At that time I didn’t think they were written for anyone but me. I wrote them just to get the words out of my head where I could see them and deal with them. Since then, many people have read this and taken what they wanted from them, but the work still belonged only to me, or so I thought. I now realize that these words were never entirely mine. They also belong to the woman I described. No matter what happens in the months and years to come, these words will always belong to my Lovely Lady. Sometimes, when the moment arrives, you know just what to say. Shannon loves his Ink! |
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