The prism of life

{Self-portrait. 9/26/06}

Live long enough, and write enough, and you'll be accused of just about everything. Is it easy for any of us to try to tell our true story in this time and place?

I'm hardly thin-skinned, particularly after a journalism career when I was called names that would make your grandmother suffer a massive stroke, not to mention death threats, bomb threats, libel suit threats, threats to my family, and seven accounts of contempt (while MIA) for refusing to appear and testify about my confidential sources.

None of that mattered much then, but some of this matters now. I stand accused of being overly sentimental, too talkative, given to "maudlin" writing when I try to describe my love for my children. I've also been told that my writing about the pain of breaking up earlier this year was "self-involved." It's been said that I appeared to be "losing" myself and therefore was, perhaps, "clinically depressed."

These critiques and many more stay with me, some like lashes, since I must agree with some grain of truth in them; others slide away like the polluted water from people who project their issues onto me, just for being a man, and/or for being the kind of person I am.

None of this matters now. I accept that I am a hopeless romantic, however uncool and threatening that may be to many around me. How can we help being who we are? I've done as much "work” on myself as anyone I know, for many years now. Therapy, group therapy, reading books, asking friends and medical professionals; most of all, listening very carefully.

Tonight I announce that I have made a decision. I'm closing myself to further advice, until further notice. I will keep reaching out, and seeking inputs, for the foreseeable future. I recognize that I, like most people, have issues and problems that require constant vigilance and the essential modesty of admitting our imperfections before God.

(Okay, that was facetious. I don't believe in God. But I do believe in telling my stories honestly to anyone interested enough to listen, and those people are godlike enough to suit my taste.)

In fact, all of us in this post-modern world share a common dilemma, whether we admit it or not, and that is our essential isolation from the types of communities that sustained (if also oppressed) our ancestors.

I have friends who grew up in foreign places. They suffered the blunt effects of sexism, racism, religious discrimination, and political oppression beyond anything any American knows. To them, America beckons like paradise.

Here, in the belly of the beast, and despite all of our social freedom, we Americans suffer the disease of aloneness.

So, what does this have to do with romanticism?

Just this: I dream of a day when every tortured soul around me finds herself feeling loved and sustained by a community she can depend on. Every little girl and boy who grew up not feeling loved may reach the point where they understand how valued and uniquely wonderful they are.

Why do I say these things?

Because, as a friend and former partner said to me recently, most of those you meet in the "second half" of life when you seek love are "broken" people. There may be a reason they have never been able to sustain a relationship, and it may well prove to be something you cannot "fix." Which begs the question of why you, too, find yourself alone, perhaps also somehow "broken" beyond repair...

Or, to be even more personal about this, what about me? What do I see when I look honestly in the mirror?

A hopeless romantic. I don't know exactly where my sense of hope comes from, but I suspect it came from my father. My sisters may know better. I also don't know where my sense of doom comes from, and I resist the idea it may have come from my mother, though again, my sisters may have some idea.

Lots of things are hard-wired in each of us, the random genetic lot we inherit. I know this, and never will "blame" my parents in any way for the man I am, and have become. I am happy to credit them, however, for my better features.

(I’m not quite sure who or what to trace my odd love of carrots to, however, but that's for another day. Note to self: I must describe what it was like as a child to pull up carrots from our garden like a rabbit, and eat them, dirt and all. Could this be related to why I have had so many children? And, most importantly, is this why the Blecker's rabbit, with the name of Marshmellow (I believe) seems so fond of nibbling my shoelaces?)


Where was I? (This is a question I will be asking with increasing frequency as the consequences of age and other bad habits overtake my former, youthful clarity. All details are now easily forgotten.)

You know, it struck me as perfectly natural that I got rheumatic fever as a boy. Because, for a long time, I misunderstood my malady to be "romantic fever."

The former did its damage and moved on.

The latter will stay with me until I die, and perhaps, afterwards, but only if these writings are good enough...

I leave you with the lyrics from a classic by the Pointer Sisters, who I am pleased to say, I once met (all of them.)

I want somebody who will spend some time
Not come and go in a heated rush...

Amen. You got that one right.


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