54 - nothing else matters

If we come to any solution of our ever-rising questions, it is never by studying the law that we find satisfaction, but by diving deep into love and letting love inspire us.

      —Sufi message from Hazrat Inayat Khan

~~~

On the mid-day trip home from Louisiana, Camille and I engaged. The conversation began at the Praline Connection, Concourse B at the Louis Armstrong Airport, and lasted, on and off, the entire flight. We had ordered up bloody marys and shared the "Jambalaya with greens"… beyond the goddamn pale!

It all started when I said I could live in New Orleans. She chuckled, said she wasn’t surprised, me the romantic taken in by the not-real, the New Orleans you get a glimpse of on a first visit, a tour-look. She said I watched too much HBO. I had begun watching David Simon’s Treme on DVD before we left on the trip and I was taken in. Simon’s one of our grand writers, creator/author of The Wire, and sure, I get it, the description is not the described, drama’s not the day-to-day, no ellipsis, but dang, there’s something going on in that city, soul and spirit, so close to death, nearly drowned, and maybe that’s it, I know what it feels like, know what it is to be down and out, hopeless, seeing clearly there’s nothing else but the moment you’re in, that you have to take baby steps, with death along side, a constant reminder as you repair and rebuild. No sure things….

I was all giddy and gaga, fired up and she was remembering, her mother’s death, a father who disappeared, and Martin, her first real love. Andrea had asked about him, he had been with Camille on previous trips back. She was on edge, and I think out of her own doubt about us, about our off-template connection, she asked if I was having doubts about going to Portland (I expect she’d heard from Amber about my “Damn You” message, sent in the wee hours on our first night at The Hotel Modern.), and she asked it in a clear and unequivocal way. She was asking if what we had together was something worthwhile and adaptable, something that could last and endure and grow. The question got to me, and it felt like our first meeting, that first conversation when I was lonely and just beginning to feel the effects of being loveless and out of “touch.” Beaten down I was, a profound and pivotal moment in my life, and though the test results were optimal, a clear indication I was headed for remission and survival, I was suffering, miserable, and BAM!, she strolls up, a compassionate and caring nurse, stepping right in, fearless and unassuming, forthright, setting my imagination on fire, and she gets me to think of the future again, to imagine being in touch again, of loving again.

I was moved and unsettled by the question. She was calling me out, and no matter how much you think about such things when you’re alone, when you sit still in fierce self-appraisal and ask yourself what you’re doing, where you’re going and what you want, well, there’s nothing like being face-to-face with the one person you can’t imagine living without, and the question gets asked and there’s no avoiding the truth. These kinds of moments are few and far between, near kitsch, but when they come you recognize it’s an opportunity to slow down, to step off for a moment, mark and measure what you’re feeling and thinking, a moment to attempt clarity, to find the right words, honest and direct. We were sitting at the rear of the plane, Camille taking the window seat. It wasn’t a full flight and we were alone in the row.

“Damn it Camille,” I turned to her, “doubt’s my middle name. You know that.” She glared, “So you are?”

“Sure I’ve had some doubts. It’s scary, not easy, and I don’t think I’ve wanted to admit it, to consider it, but here it is…,” a silence, ever so brief, long enough for me to gather myself, to keep my composure, “I can’t imagine living without you. Full-on. It’s just so god-damned unsettling and horrible to think about, the pain, to be in a moment where we’d see the end, that we’d need to move on. I never want to go through that again, the disconnection. I’m feeling like this is it. You’re the one. I’m committed, I’m in this for the long haul, whatever that means. And I’ll certainly be dropping off before you, way before, you’ll have another life after me.”

She blanched, “Max!"

“It’s true. Let’s be real. Sure I’m in remission and I’m a survivor, but I’ve only got 20 good years left if I’m lucky, maybe 30, and all I know is the thought of not loving you, of not seeing you, not talking to you, to know that you’re not going to be there at the end of a long day, that there’s not a stroll to look forward to, or a cuddling up, to not have you in my mind the way I do, and you’re always in my mind, you’re coursing through my veins. There aren’t words, I… I love you in a way I’ve never loved before. Maybe it’s my age, I don’t know.”

I ramped up, told her I’ve never been so lucid, so keenly aware of how inattentive we are when we’re young, almost always in a hurry to get somewhere, presto-pronto, one track minds, on the rails, never pausing, so scary to pause and ponder, to realize this is it, one life, here and now, and yet in a frenzy we keep going, keep busy, on the way, anticipating, craving, looking to arrive, never arriving, always an eye on what’s up ahead, the next amusement, the next entertainment, the next distraction…

“It’s weird,” I said, “to say it aloud, time stops when I’m with you. Nothing else matters.” She grabbed my thigh and squeezed, leaned over and gave me a kiss. Her mood began to change and we eased into a conversation about the commitment and passion of true physicians, the healers. What it means to give yourself over to a decade or more of training and study. She’d be in her 40s before she got her M.D. and it seemed surreal to think of how she’d gotten here, that she’d always loved the clinical moment, being with patients, connecting with them, and she says, “There’s a kind of poetry in pain, in the instant you realize you have an opportunity to help others, to assist in alleviating their suffering.” She talked of being a different person with different patients, that it was exciting and a mystery, a constant revelation and insight into our many selves, who and how we are with each other. I listened to her talk about the coming challenges, how Portland appealed, and I chimed in, remembering to her my last visit, Maya and I had gone into the Industrial District on a recommendation, the Le Merde Lounge and Le Bistro Montage, and we were in a fight, one of those moments you’d like to have back and relive, because it’s a place for sipping, and savoring, and loving. It was a miserable evening, and I told her I looked forward to returning, to strolling in and experiencing the corner lounge/bistro with her, in a new life, in a new way, “You’ll love the place, Cajun and Creole cooking, New Orleans and Baton Rouge inspired. It’s just the funkiest, coolest place ever.”

Then I fessed up. Told her I a saw Maya on Wednesday when we were flying out.

“No way.”

“Yep, she passed right behind you, and I just freaked. I’ve not seen or talked to her since I left University Heights over two years ago, and I couldn’t deal with it. She had been the love of my life, and there she was, in background, twenty feet from you, and she pauses, and you’re half annoyed, as I’m frozen in the cabby’s back seat, wanting to hide, to not remember. So fucking pathetic, I know. You have to laugh. Luckily for me she passed by and all the pain and suffering along with her. It’s so fucked up, and the truth is everything that happened with her led me to you. I mean I get that. But she just unsettles me. I don’t know how I’m going to be when it happens, when I see her and have to talk to her, if it ever happens. Maybe it never will. I’m okay with that.”

~~~

We looped back round to the challenges of medical school and her thoughts of how the work of a nurse is primarily different than the work of a doctor, that the one is about meticulous attention to the step by step, the process, rote procedures and unvarying excellence in the delivery of care, and the other, something larger, more dynamic and creative, where’s there more opportunity for error in the consulting room, in the analysis and interpretation, the risk involved and the responsibility you have to the patient. It’s this risk and responsibility that attracts her, the want of being in the moment where you see something no one else sees, and you craft a plan, and make your case and then you see how the person responds, the development of trust, a forging of a unique relationship, the possibility of positive outcomes/results of your compassion and hard work, and the joy and satisfaction of making a real difference in the life of a fellow human being.

And of course I went off about Seymour, my “now what?” moment, and it’s all of a piece, how do you live a life, what do you commit to, especially now, for folks like me in their third and final act. And I mused, began to philosophize about what might happen in the Northwest, how our lives would become different yet again, that in incremental ways we can effect change, that in the simplest actions based on a genuine and loving empathy, the actions of a few taken together become a kind of revolution of the soul and spirit. And in the choosing to live differently, to see, understand and be with our fellow human beings in a new and contrary way, our humblest and most mundane moments can stand for something other than what prevails: the greed, the envy, the spite, the competition, the back-biting, the division, the ugliness, the violence. No matter who we are, no matter the situation or circumstance, our want of doing no harm, our desire to assist, support and care for others, not only family and friends close in but each and all we come in contact with, becomes transformative and alchemical, a baseline for revolutionary change; not a revolving pretense of change but an authentic transformation and vision of what’s possible.

~~~

There’s a line in Soderbergh’s film Che, an interviewer asks the former physician and iconic Latin American rebel leader, “What is the most important quality for a revolutionary to possess?”

Che responded, “Love…. Love of humanity, of justice and truth.”