I had this daydream that everyone in Cleveland was on a wave crest moving away from me, moving ahead in their lives without me, that everyone’s progressing while I am just me. But this is a perceptual artifact. I regard everyone as “back there”; I’ve assigned them to limbo, and then I’m just startled when I hear of new developments in the community back home. I’m not in limbo. Travel forces clarity and growth by virtue of constant transplantation, parallax of place.
I feel great loss in that I don’t have access to the poetry community in Cleveland, that I don’t have the immediate comfort of girlfriends. I’ve learned that people are the most enduring and enjoyable aspect of “place.”
Thought of an old friend yesterday, then logged on to find an e-mail from her:
Three weeks back I had an odd dream. In the dream I tried to contact you and there was a void, totally dark, totally empty and finally a message like voice said, Kathy is no longer here.
Yes, I am changed.
I don’t know what we expected to find by traveling. Our initial plan was to travel for years, but we’ve learned that it has tremendous psychic, physical and financial cost. But the trip’s been a mechanically transformative process. The logistics of getting by in other countries have forced me to respect myself, because I now see I can do anything.
Secure in myself, but not sure who this self is. I’m sure of who I’m NOT, though. Maybe that’s all I need.
In becoming secure, I had to curb my old obsessive thinking patterns. Unfortunately, those thinking patterns bore good creative fruit. I elevated my ego in poetry.
One obsession was to find the “right” man. When I found Smith, it stopped, and my choo choo derailed. Now the search is over, and I’m left with vacancy of habit. I suspect political anguish tries to flower in this vacuum.
My other neurosis: I’d always wondered ad absurdum if I do the “right” thing, if I’m ethical, if I’m “nice.” This worry manifested in physical nervousness, quavering chin, choked throat, an uncontrollable downturn of the corners of my mouth from which I tried to wrench a smile.
Away from my Cleveland petri dish and with a rehabbed self respect, this neurosis has lost its potency. To try to be perfect seems a good thing, but it inhibited rather than enabled me. I’m now more spontaneous, less worried, and I’ve rehabbed my mind’s home to accomplish this. I tender a faith, a trust in myself and others. I attribute to other people a graciousness and maturity, a thick-skinnedness or capacity to absorb my potential faux pas. To attribute maturity to people is a way to respect them.
So, I’ve lost some of my old self, but I’m more confident, less obsessive and neurotic, and I continue to create art and write.
I’m wary of these summations, these “sound bites” where everything is posed as perfect, where I’ve now “learned my lessons.” But in fact, I am somewhat rehabilitated. Perfectly poised for the next onion skin unveiling of my perception.
I look forward to visiting Cleveland again, but I remember the person I used to be not so long ago. I remember my trepidation, transgressions and trespasses.