About Topo-dimensional Becoming. This is a cautionary tale, a’ true’ story, a rough experiment, engaging in a proprioceptive exercise, that comes directly out of the use of Clean Language and Clean Space. I risk the danger of becoming too self- referential because I am trying to capture the paradox at the Center of the Cyclone.
" Light is not about an objective thing that can be investigated as can an ordinary object. Light is not seen; it is the seeing." Arthur Young
Yesterday I slept late, too late, a good twelve hours. I was alarmed, that I had missed most of the day, and felt that I had lost the dynamic flow, and perhaps had gone too deep into the Astral, and was transpermeated across multiple dimensions
I felt the need to produce a structure, to do something that I hate doing, in penance for the laziness and carelessness of sleeping past noon.
So I did an onerous task, one that I have been putting off. I took the heavy, blue Tiffany box filled with coins, that I had gathered together, over a couple of years and rode my bike to the bank to cash them in.
On my way, dodging traffic, I hit a speed bump, the box opened up and lots of coins fell on the street. Embarrassed by this mishap, I stopped the bike, got on my knees and started to pick up hundreds of coins, at the busy corner of Thirteenth and Broadway, the pedestrians, I imagined, looking down at me, a poor slob grasping for coins, with utter contempt. I took a deep breath, relaxed my false pride, and put the scattered coins back in the box.
There I was on my knees, frantically retrieving my coins, the dirty nickels, dimes, quarters, and pennies, that had been in that box for years, gathering dust, scattered at random on the street. Here I was, trying to gather them up again, and with a strong feeling of being a total looser. This is not how I wanted it to be.
Then, as if a cloud of unknowing had descended from above, I was surrounded by half a dozen children, who were all helping me to pick up the coins. A mother was saying, “Go ahead and help the nice man-” The mother bent over, too, and gathered the coins.
Little children, between three and four, who had not learned, yet, what money is for, were giving me the dropped coins, with their tiny, exquisite hands, and their jewel like faces, having a very good time, and intrigued by the silver haired man.
" Thank you, sweetheart," I said, to each child, and offered to give them whatever they found, for their kindness.
“Oh, no,” the mother said," the money is yours." I didn’t want to offend by offering her kids a reward, in exchange for their kindness. Clearly, there was a deeper lesson occurring, beneath the surface. A grouchy man, feeling alone, forgotten, was being uplifted by the kindness of strangers. I thanked them, filled with gratitude, my self-pity vanished, and once again I am strong.
I feel the presence/absence of the Angel of Mercy, just out of the corner of my eye. I turn to catch him/her but she dashes around the corner.
At the bank, I cashed in $ 192.72! I went to the used bookstore and to buy a book, but changed my mind. Better save the money. I already have way too many books that I have yet to read. Structure and discipline, not more random book buying.
Then, I went to gym and in the men’s locker, after I’ve enjoyed the seam room and a cold shower and gotten dressed and shaved and feel resilient again when in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I feel the presence again. Someone is gazing at me.
I turn to find a very good looking, young, Afro-American man, who is checking me out. He obviously wants to start up a conversation, but for what reason I cannot fathom. In his twenties, very good looking and he is wanting to talk to me? That is actually rare. I can go through a whole day without talking to anybody. A city of strangers. Is he flirting with me? How absurd. But there is a look of yearning in his glance.
We start talking, shakily, as if we both needed practice. He was barely able to suppress his excitement. This young man started to tell me his secret desires, his unspecified dreams. He mentions growing up in New Orleans and we start talking about the Gulf Coast, creole culture, the recent hurricanes. He comes out of Creole culture and misses it. He asks me," Do you know anything about Creole culture?"
I am startled by the question, for I actually do. A cacophony of voices, southern voices, swirls of soft patois, floating around my head, with fleeting figures of faces, and towns, along the Gulf, Biloxi, Baton Rouge, Mobile, and gravel roads, and pit stops, and chicken fried steak, mustard greens with bacon, Cajun jumbalaya…
I selected a memory to share with him but decided against it, for it made me feel too raw, too vulnerable. I remembered the Creole cook who worked for my mother, a weary woman, with grandchildren, I used to play with. Black and white, when you are a child, doesn’t make much sense. And being a kid, going to the creek, with another little boy, who was Creole, and we walked without shame, hand and hand, in telepathic rapport. The day was hot and bright, the thick air full of dragon flies, and there was an older girl with us, in close proximity. Was she his older sister? or perhaps another unseen presence?
We had a pail and fishing rods, we were sent down to the creek, to catch crawdads, for the creole cook, this boy’s grandmother. Relationships in those days were kind of a blur but I knew when someone liked me. This boy liked me very much. The goodness of his heart, flowed ecstatically, into my own.
We dropped the twitching, squirming crawdads into the pail and took them back to the house.I’m not sure where my mother was. I think she was a bookkeeper or a secretary, and she worked downtown and was gone all day. I had been left here, to be watched after. It is kind of fuzzy.
But I didn’t speak of this episode. Instead, I recalled New Orleans, the French Quarter, before the big storm, where I got a freighter, that took me, with my friend, Charles, across the great Atlantic, to Europe. We had so many adventures. Charles died decades ago.
I didn’t speak about these memories but I felt the presence/absence of many beings, I caught glimpses of disconnected bits of undigested bits of information, moving around in a vast warehouse of knowledge, of body knowledge, the smells, the tastes, the touches of real people, in the world, doing real things.
Our small talk was starting to take on a sense of significance, as I started to get into a political tirade, and with a touch of woundedness about the racism I had witnessed, in the Deep South, and why I hated it, why I felt that I was a member of the Great Southern Diaspora. I, also, mentioned that as a gay man I was harassed constantly by bigots. I mentioned being gay, in the men’s locker, to this young man, feeling a bit wobbly. Other men were listening to us.
“I’m in the same boat,” he said, with gentleness," but I have white people in my family, and know that they say things they don’t always mean. Let me show you a picture of my fiancé.” This handsome young man, showed me a picture of himself, in a bar, embracing, a very handsome white guy, with chiseled features, obviously, the two young men are in love. He told me they were getting married next year. And he discussed his marriage plans, how his fiancé lives abroad, and will join him soon, in New York, to start their married lives together. His fiancé is twenty-one, he is twenty-five. He is starting to glow with that radiant look of a young Romeo, in love with being in love, unaware of betrayals or false witnesses, or the ravages of time.
It was now a time to bless. I am old enough to be his grandfather, and I take his hand and tell him about the time, when I was his age, and I had an interracial relationship and how we had been spat upon on the street, my landlady had tried to evict us.
Back then I said, when discrimination against gays was legal, when sodomy laws were used to destroy gay people’s lives, we had to live like rats, in the dark, underground.
He listened with respect. “And it is good for me to know,” I said, with his hand in mine,” that the world has changed in good ways. Thanks for sharing with me. I’m glad for you, really proud of you.”
All my lost loves, flooded my mind, all the lost young men, the tormented relationships I had endured, the intimidation, the loss of career, the fights with landlords, the hiding and lying, the relationships that could not flourish, for they had no structure, and that nagging sense of injustice, all of those bitter memories flooded my mind. All of that unfinished business, that unrealized life.
Now I grow old, in a youth culture, with nothing but this faded glory, this feeling of being a loser, for I did not find the love I wanted, and yet…and yet…something fuzzy just beyond my horizon…
I notice that other men, in the locker room, are overhearing our conversation, listening to my praise of this young man and his fiancé, guessing perhaps the presence/absence of my tragic generation, and all of that grief, still floating around in my perceptual space, I carry that history with me always.
And I realize that no gay man had ever talked to me about his fiancé, before, and never in the men’s locker room. I felt at ease again, in my own flesh, in the topological magnificence, of my own flesh.
The gratitude I felt, was in tandem with the sorrow and the pity, and feeling relieved of a great burden, that I had carried for a long time, without really knowing how toxic that heavy burden had become.
I felt, something glowing, again in my heart, and felt that it was okay to become old and foolish, and to even imagine, loving someone again, to take that chance, to come out of the deep freeze again, knowing what I know. I said goodbye to my new friend, and suddenly, with wings on my heels I fly down the street in a trance-