29 - the ride-master throttles it up

Duration is the continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future and which swells as it advances. And as the past grows without ceasing, so also there is no limit to its preservation. Memory, as we have tried to prove, is not a faculty of putting away recollections in a drawer, or of inscribing them in a register. There is no register, no drawer; there is not even, properly speaking, a faculty, for a faculty works intermittently, when it will or when it can, whilst the piling up of the past upon the past goes on without relaxation. In reality, the past is preserved by itself, automatically. In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness…

      —Creative Evolution, Henri Bergson

~~~

Am always up early. It’s 4 a.m. and my eyes come open. I ease out of bed and slip into the plush terry-cloth robe. We’re on the third floor, a room with a view, a splurge in the moment, the Torrey Pines Hilton, majestic grounds below, the Pacific beyond, and I gently open the curtains; stars, a moon and a new day about to be… don’t want to wake her, she’s dead to the world, and I can hear a slight snore. I smile.

If you’ve had the epiphany, no matter when it comes, early, late or along the way, it’s just obvious and clear, and necessary, there’s a blessing in it, something miraculous, and, well, it’s crazy scary, and you find your courage here, even when your first thought is to hesitate, to not go for it, to let things just play out, to be adventitious, not adventurous, you step right in, and no matter the sensation—sadness, sorrow, elation, joy, anger, enchantment, disappointment, rejection, failure, success, loneliness, severance, elation, gaga in love—whatever’s at play you get it, you realize you have choices, that this is about choosing to engage, not about turning or running away, but staying awake, living life in a new way, tough and gentle, enduring and leaning in, eye to eye, face to face, fearless, “Bring it,” you say, “Bring it!”

I opened the slider slightly so I could hear the ocean, and I can, its quiet rhythms a reminder of the flux and flow, and from the bed, I hear a kind of puff, then she turns, rolls over, a momentary moan, then back to sleeping/snoring, amused I am, suppressing a giggle.

Another one of those moments.... How many turning points in your life? How many times have you died and come to life again? I have used the word “resurrection” so often, have been a proselytizing and impassioned believer in the new/old philosophy, in order to live you must die. You must see, hear and feel your death: psychological, spiritual, physiological, emotional; holistically, over and over, life ceaseless, never-ending, death all-encompassing and the ground, and check it, I can’t detail it, words don’t suffice, it just is, it’s….

Swear to Christ, I thought we were done. When she asked me to call her, she and Martin were ending it for real. Amicable and final, an admission that they’d have to let it go, that the severance was unavoidable, and he came by and picked up all the stuff he had left behind, clearing out the garage, and in the midst of it, that’s when she texts me, asks that I call. Had no clue.

When you’re on the roller coaster, when one minute you’re in pure bliss, high, feeling on the upswing, then the next, a descent, doubting, insecure and feeling oh so blue, there’s always a moment in the downward movement where you think, “Don’t want to go there,” and then you think of all the lives lived along a horizontal line, dead and buried, encased and protected from the exigencies, contingencies, emergencies, never taking chances, never asking the question that will unsettle things, never willing to speak up, honestly and forthrightly, never giving themselves over to the thrilling ascents and descents, folks who really don’t like the carnivàle, who don’t like life AS IT IS, they won’t get on the ride, and seriously, if you don’t get on the ride and put your hands up and scream, as the ride-master throttles it up, well fuck, there’s just no chance at all of real enjoyment, no true bliss, no true love.

These days it seems always to point to Keats, coming back round:

“Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow...
I do love you both together...
Fair and foul I love together...
Oh the sweetness of the pain!
Muses bright, and Muses pale,
Bare your faces of the veil;”

~~~

Was on the phone whispering my order for room service when Camille roused. She peeked at me from under the covers. I hung up the phone, jumped on top of the bed and pogo-sticked. Told her to get her ass up. Laughing, she pulled me down, and I eased in, we cuddle up, face-to-face, ever so warm, and it’s like what just happened? Where are we headed? What next? So much to consider. She put her hand to my face, “I love you.”

And that’s enough, it really is, this isn’t horseshit, lovey-dovey-gooey romance, this is the real deal, a clear-eyed moment of insight, when you love life, when you love someone deeply and passionately, when you choose to affirm what exists no matter where it takes you, when you decide that “acceptance” is the way, you have the courage, and the stamina, and the will to live it. This is large, brothers and sisters, oh so large.