I don’t write super personal-type blogs. For one thing, I have students who might chance upon something I’ve written and that could be awkward. Second of all it’s not very Canadian to tell the world your problems. You might think I’d have a “third of all” about my son reading my blog, but honestly, he couldn’t be less interested. Hey Maclen, guess what? You’re adopted. See? No response. Don’t believe me? Check the blog comments. There will be none from him, trust me. Besides, I don’t need a “third of all” since the second of all is so compelling.
And yet. And yet. Tonight I felt this urge to reach out across the cyber field with my flashlight, blinking a Morse code message to whoever happens to be cruising by. “Come play with me” I felt like typing. “My son is out with his Dad and I’m lonely and facing for the first time in over 20 years, the prospect being alone indefinitely. Which I guess means the first time ever since no one worries about that in their early 20s, do they?
How many songs have expressed those sentiments and did they ever allay the pain and loneliness of the song’s writer? I doubt it.
Tonight I danced all night, all by myself in my livingroom/bedroom/kitchen – candles and twinkle lights blazing, incense burning. I danced to Trilok Girtu, Aretha Franklin, Blackalicious, Dizzy Gillespie, Prince ( of course!) and many others. Tonight, I cried and listened to sad songs and I smiled loudly and listened to Dave Liebman improvising with a Big Band who did an inspired call and response to his zigzagging, keening lines. And yes, you can smile loudly. Tonight I prepared myself good food and luxuriated over a cup of tea.
Earlier in the day I took a yoga class with a teacher I love and then came back to the Carla Crash Pad and pasted beloved poems on pieces of foam core and cardstock and put them up on the walls of the little pad so I can always see them. Then I memorized one of them –my awesome brother Jason introduced me to this one by Hafiz:
WOW
Where does the real poetry
Come from?
In the amorous sighs
In this moist dark when making love
With form or
Spirit?
Where does poetry live?
In the eye that says, “ Wow Wee!”
In the overpoweringly felt splendor
Every sane mind knows
When it realizes - our life dance
Is only for a few magic
Seconds,
From the heart saying,
Shouting,
“I am so damn
Alive”
Indeedeedoodaa.
So this is what a midlife crisis feels like, huh? It’s not so bad, really. I mean it has its perks.
I am going to be okay. I am going to be more than okay. I am great. By the way, all this is Canadian for unburdening my soul. Sohrry - that’s the best I can do.
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About Me
- Carla Zilbersmith
- I used to be a solo performer, singer, writer, director, actor and college teacher. Now I have ALS so all that's left is writing. I'm curious. I have an amazing son named Mac who is 16 and wise beyond MY years and who tells me I'm good looking for someone who is dying and old which is worse than saying nothing but i still love it. I am playful and I love life more than I can express.
1 comment:
I think that 'fear', that no one who is not compelled by blood or need, will love us ever again,is a frightening abyss that many people have stared into and avoid looking into again, at any cost. It takes courage to see nothing ahead and not crumble. If one could turn around, wouldn't most of us do so? Go back to that moment that, in retrospect, was not all that bad! Pretty damned good, in fact. But, like others, I've tried it, there is no going back, a re-examined past, especially a re-lived one is the same shithole it was when it was the present, conflicts, doubt, frustration, dissatisfaction. In fact, going back is worse, we know how it will turn out and practice selective blindness to allow us to believe again. This time we must choose to be fools.
I have felt this. I assumed no one else in the world ever felt this way, that the future was never going to live up to the memory of the past, yet, intellectually, I believed it would! It happened before. The future was better than anything before it. And you, beautiful, sensitive, expressive, surely have a future of love and dewy intimacy, of steel committment and rose petal care, ahead of you. The wormholes you talked about don't allow for baggage, do they? Your beliefs and strong opinions on politics, ecology, the meaning of life are summaries of past experiences and not allowed on the Wormhole Crosstown Busline. One has to jettison the past like the years of accumulated junk in the attic that is sold at a Saturday garage sale when one is readying to move! All our precious wisdom may have to go out the window to make the journey.
My ex gf thought my life was so easy. She had kids and family and a few good friends, actually, not really great people when you come down to it, but they adored her, and she stayed buried in the presence of these people, not daring for a moment to think about that abyss that I looked into a lot more often than she could imagine. It is extraordinarily difficult to be alone when you have known the company of another person in a very deep way. I know that someday that abyss will rise up in front of her too, and she will then understand,much too late.
I love your blog.
There is this preacher on one of the digital channels, he was preaching about the 7 rules to get money. Sounds self-serving but I watched and his message was rather universal, I don't care where I find wisdom as long as I find it! His rules were things such as: you must let go of what is in your hand to receive God's gift, and that you need to give to receive, he called it 'seeding' the future. It's all pretty sound psychological stuff. One of the things he talked about was that change in one's life always comes through the interaction of a person newly introduced to us. I thought about this as I read about your wormholes. These people, these agents of change are the conductors on these wormhole journeys. It is an interesting parellel.
Thank you for inviting me to read your blog, I feel I know you in a personal way.
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